Controversies Editorial cartooning

Daryl Cagle: “The Muhammad cartoons are not political cartoons”

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Alan Gardner February 14, 2006 1 minute 1 comment

Daryl Cagle has written another column on the Mohammad cartoons. He make some good points including this one:

I’m a political cartoonist; I draw cartoons that convey my opinions. Anyone who sees my cartoons will know what I think on a wide range of issues. Political cartoonists are journalists, just like columnists we decide for ourselves what we want to say, and we are responsible for what we say. Editors don’t tell political cartoonists what to say (although editors sometimes stop us from saying things that are offensive).

The Danish cartoonists are illustrators; they are given assignments by clients who pay them for their work. Illustrators draw what they are hired to draw. No one can look at the work of an illustrator and discern what the illustrator’s opinions are. Illustrators usually draw pictures that go with an author’s words; they might be creative and inject their own ideas, but still they are working at the direction of a client. The Muhammad cartoons are not political cartoons, they are illustrations drawn to accompany a newspaper article about press limits, an issue that arose because an author couldn’t find an illustrator for his book about Muhammad.