above: David Lowe
“Their power comes from their emotional punch. It gets in under the reason and the rationality and it speaks to the heart,” she tells RN’s Big Ideas.
“It helps people articulate something that they’ve been feeling but perhaps haven’t been able to say and certainly not as succinctly and powerfully. So, it’s an important part of the political discourse.”
But political cartoonists are under threat right across the Western world — their numbers are dwindling.
above: David Rowe
“I think it’s more a function of less that cartoons haven’t been able to translate to digital, as much as digital hasn’t been able financially to support cartoonists. Which is a shame because cartoons look glorious on screen.”
Antony Funnell writes of the current challenges facing editorial cartoonists.