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THE CARTOON CRISIS
Friday, February 3, 2006
THE CARTOON CRISIS
Continues, unabated and Richard Fernandez explains very clearly what the long term implications are of Jyllands-Posten's cartoons and the resulting emotions. In doing so he points to that dreaded term: the clash of civilizations, but at the same time makes it clear that the outcome doen't have to be negative. And so while the rift between western perceptions and Muslim sensitivities has further deepened, it seems that a debate among western media is also revealing an important division. This is what the IHT had to say in its voluntary application for being monitored: There is no doubt that freedom of speech is an essential foundation of any democracy. But when newspapers insist on this right, they have to understand that they do not - alone - create the context and lifespan of their messages.What bothers me about this position is that the debate about the cartoons - and the good taste measure that they are now increasingly supposed to meet - may well spill over into other areas of news reporting and commentary. And there's historical evidence of "cratoonists first, opinions next" when in 1995 my favorite cartoonist Larry Feign was terminated by the South China Morning Post (SCMP): But among local journalists, cartoonist Larry Feign thinks he has seen the future, and finds it bleak. His South China Morning Post strip, "The World of Lily Wong," was dropped in May 1995 because, he says, Robert Kuok, the businessman who owns the paper, "is a friend of Li Peng" -- China's premier -- "and has multimillion-dollar investments in China." Feign's twelve-year-old-strip was scrubbed immediately after it suggested that a citizen agreeing with the suggestion that "Li Peng is a fascist murderous dog" became an instant organ donor. To the Post's contention that his firing was just part of a 10 percent staff cutback, Feign declares: "It's bullshit that the editor wanted to cut costs by cutting out his most popular feature. [Ed. Note: at the time rumors were circulating that executed Chinese prisoners served as organ donors, a lucrative business]And of course that turned out to be a first step in a process where the SCMP's editorials became increasingly bland and unreadable. A casestudy in self-censorship. NOTE: Here's a long geographically diverse list of initimidated and silenced cartoonists, and as a bonus it includes the one cartoon strip that spelled the end of Feign's career at the SCMP. More of Feign's offending cartoons about the People's Republic here and here. Related Posts 
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