Just one article this week which seems to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with it. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."
I need to tip my hat to Nicole Hollander this week. She is the cartoonist who for years drew the "Sylvia" cartoons. If you haven't ever met Sylvia, go to her blog and look around, because you have been missing out. She is retired from drawing the cartoon, but posts from the archives on the blog, and (sigh) little has changed.
Being a cartoonist, she has super-long antennae for what is happening to cartoonists. She came across this story on Facebook, but since I am not on Facebook, I have sourced it from the New York Times and the Columbia Journalism Review (both of which Nicole also cited).
Let me start with the New York Times (emphasis [bolding] mine).
Rick Friday was not immediately available on Wednesday to explain why he was fired after two decades working as a cartoonist for Farm News. That is because he was feeding the cows on his Iowa farm, as he does early every morning before most people have gone to work.
But the cartoon that got him into trouble last week had already spoken for him, circulating online well beyond the audience of the thousands of Farm News readers of his weekly “It’s Friday” column, which has been published since 1995….
After the cartoon was published last Friday, Mr. Friday said he was told in an email from an editor the next day that the cartoon would be his last for Farm News because a seed company had withdrawn its advertising in protest.
He was told his run with the Farm News, for which he said he had been paid “embarrassingly low” wages on a freelance basis, was over, per instructions from the publisher [The Messenger in Fort Dodge, Iowa]….
“…someone complained about it, and this is the philosophy I use when I explained it to my children: They were being fed by two hands,” Mr. Friday said, referring to Farm News and its relationships with him and with its advertisers.
“They knew they had to chose one, and they chose the hand that they knew would hurt the least,” he said. “After 21 years, that is what really bothered me.”
Thomas Jefferson famously said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." However, Thomas Jefferson never saw a newspaper owned by the tangle of corporations which own them today. I suspect that, could he see today's newspapers (and other news media), he might just rethink that.
The Columbia Journalism Review is quite concerned, not just about this incident, but about a trend.
Cartoonists have a long history of retribution from their powerful targets. Most of the backlash has come from governments and political leaders, extremist groups, and even grassroots protesters. Until now, pressure from advertisers and self-censoring editors has mostly spiked individual cartoons, not led to cartoonists being canned. Neither outcome benefits readers, but the case of Friday and Farm News seems a predictable step forward for those who aim to curtail freedom of the press.
First, let’s look at why cartoons—which are inherently rowdy—draw so much scrutiny and anger. “It’s a form of public humiliation, and people receive it differently than they receive words,” says Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation and author of The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power. At least some of the ire stems from the visual nature of the medium, which makes cartoons both striking and accessible. They sow discomfort for subjects and their followers, with no recourse for the aggrieved, Navasky says. “The response to these things is disproportionate.” (Disclosure: Navasky sits on CJR’s board of overseers.)
….Yet, somehow, oft-persecuted cartoonists have rarely, if ever, been fired over business-side conflicts. “I’ve seen cartoons be removed from the site or sort of censored by the editors for that kind of reason. That happens almost all the time,” says Adam Zyglis, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. “But for someone to lose a gig over it, I don’t know if there has ever been a situation like that.” A 2004 study on cartoons and censorship reached the same conclusion.
Rick Friday is a cartoonist, and cartoonists are pretty good at responding to nonsense by defining it as nonsense. And, today, cartoonists have the internet for a "bully pulpit" (though had TR lived today, he might have called it an "awesome pulpit" – he didn't know what would happen to the word bully over the years.) But, dear Furies, it is part of a trend. Please report back when you can, and tell us what we have to do to get it stopped – if it isn't already too late. Thank you.
The Furies and I will be back.
Posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/3990117
13 Responses to “Everyday Erinyes”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
"…a seed company had withdrawn its advertising in protest." Not much imagination needed to recognize Monsanto in that. And having a cartoonist fired for pointing out their CEO's (among others) shamefully high "salaries" is exactly what we have come to expect from a company like that.
It's bad enough that cartoons are censored under pressure from different kind of groups, but it shows how much power these large global corporations really yield if they can make a magazine fire its cartoonist of 21 years just to keep their advertisement coming. I doubt that this would have happened if a state government or even the federal government were criticized like that. Because that is all it was, criticizing by stating a fact, and not offending or ridiculing anyone, and in that case any editor would have claimed the freedom of speech for his cartoonist. But Monsanto can play the advertisement card, which a government can't and the editors/media bosses rather bite the hand that draws the cartoons than the hand that feeds them.
The furies better step in now before things get even worse and Drumpf gets to make good on his promise to sue all those "bad journalists" for all they got in an attempt to kill freedom of speech and press in one go if he gets to the White House. I'm not sure what they can do about it, but giving it attention as you do now, Joanne, surely must be a step in the right direction.
The family farms are dying. My spouse was raised on a farm, with acres of corn, and soy, 50 or so cows, pigs, and horses. Every day, he worked in feeding, tending to the stock before/after school, and cultivating the fields and gardens that were so abundant in the 50's and 60's. Haying time was a big event there, with other families helping, a party like atmosphere, before going to the next farm. Farmers and their families helped their neighbors.
When we visit, there are few farms now, as most of the larger farms have been bought out by outside companies. It's not about helping the farmers, but as the cartoon illustrates, it's all about BIG money now. My FIL had an old Harvester, now it's the big green machines (JD).
A part of Americana is gone, with profits and money being the competitor(s). I would think the Furies would love to take care of this, set them free!
Thank you, Joanne for this great post.
Like you, my family has strong agrarian roots (no pun intended). My Mom and two uncles grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. In fact after Residency I planned to take some time off to work on the family farm for a summer. (Which was not foreign to me since my folks sent us to the farm for a good part of the summer as a kid growing up.)
Unfortunately, when my second uncle developed lung cancer (a non-smoker) the summer stretched into a year and a half of helping out with the farming. So there’s definitely black dirt under my nails!
And like you, we had cattle and hogs (no horses), and grew corn for feed, beans (and for you “city slickers”, beans means soybeans) to sell, and a little hay and even less oats – mostly for the straw. (But that was 35-40 years back, and no family farmer does oats now; more profit in growing beans.)
Those bucolic days – even though loaded with hot, hard work – are now pretty much gone. (But I do like John Deere products – after all, “Nothing Runs Like a Deere”.)
I'm sure it will come as no surprise that Monsanto has denied involvement. The representative had the nerve to say (in a company blog post) “This is not the first time we’ve been the subject of a joke or political cartoon and it probably won’t be the last. It is much easier to laugh at ourselves than it is to stifle humor.” (Last paragraph if Times article)
But karma may be coming. There will be an International Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague during October 12-16 this year. You can read about it at https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/six-questions-monsanto Being held in The Hague is symbolic; it is not an official project of the World Court but a Citizens' Tribunal.
If you don't need details but just want to sign in support of it, you can go to http://www.monsanto-tribunal.org/sign/
Thanks for the link, Joanne. I've just signed in support.
signed
Signed and shared.
Thanks, Joanne for info & links. Signed.
Thanks for your support. Help us to make the Monsanto Tribunal successful.
Greed corrupts, and absolute greed corrupts absolutely!
Friday is simply exercising his constitutional right to free speech using publicly available information. To suffer the loss of a job, meagre as its earnings may have been, is the height of inequality. American capitalism, as noted here, is running amuck! A publisher should not be roped over a barrel and forced to choose between a cartoonist exercising his freedom of speech and a greedy multinational company. Talk about a non-porportional response!
Of course, SCOTUS helped exacerbate this inequality with its Citizens United ruling. More power to corporations, power not intended in the US Constitution. Corporations are not people, and money is not free speech.
Thanks JD for the International Monsanto Tribunal petition. Signed.
JD, thank you for an excellent article.
I'm so sorry that I had to remove the cartoons you embedded. Cartoons that bear the author's initials are © protected. Cartoonists are especially litigious, when bloggers use their wqork without expressed permission to do so. They used to allow it with a linki back to them, but they stopped en masse in 2010, which is why I chabfewd gto making my own Cartoon graphics. I know you had no idea this was a violation of © law.
No, of course not. Had I realized this I would have sought permission – I had time. But they are in the links so they are still able to be seen if one will follow them.
No problem. The idea that you might have known never even entered my mind.
Thanks for sharing this one, Joanne. It is another example of how Freedom of the Press is in jeopardy. If an advertiser can force the firing of a cartoonist for one cartoon, then all of them are in danger. My son did some political cartoons early in his career. He lampooned a state politician who roundly deserved it. All hell broke loose, but his paper stood behind him, this was about 1992. Sad how much has changed since then.