Some of our readers were offended Thursday morning over a nationally syndicated editorial cartoon we published on page 6A.
It seems the above cartoon by Clay Jones has raised hackles of some Daily Times readers:
Our intent was to provoke outrage that an innocent black jogger could be murdered in today’s America and that our nation’s only African American president could be accused of a crime when so far no evidence has been presented.
Some misread our intentions, and we regret that.
We at The Daily Times pride ourselves on being a mirror of Blount County and its conservative leanings, and we constantly audit our offerings on the Opinion page for fairness.
While we regret offending some of you with Thursday’s cartoon, we want you to know your feedback is never taken lightly. We always want to know how you feel.
The paper did get a quote from Clay:
“Basically, I’m saying that to some people, Obama’s crime is that he’s black. It’s always been his crime to them. Just like Ahmaud Arbery’s crime was being black.”
Clay’s original thoughts on the cartoon.
I wasn’t sure which cartoon was upsetting the conservative readership,
since just the other day Clay had drawn another relevant cartoon:
May 20 update:
A newly-emigrated conservative to the Daily Times area objects to the paper’s “poorly-informed, thoughtless, knee-jerk liberal agit-prop” ways; even dragging David Horsey into the debate:
The Daily Times insists that it is an essential source of local news, and earlier this week even ran an editorial cartoon depicting two parched travelers lost in an “information desert,” forced to drink from a foul internet cesspool.
If the Daily Times wants to be a “local newspaper” offering unique content of value to the Blount County community, it should stick to local news and leave the sensationalization of out-of-state controversies to the “internet cesspool” (including the NYT, WaPo, and AP) that routinely—and recklessly—fan the flames of racial division at every opportunity. You want to have it both ways by pretending to cover local news, but in reality mainly running biased AP stories about national events readers could find out about (if they were even interested) on cable news or over the internet. No wonder your circulation is shrinking.
The rebuttal was posted on the Misrule of Law website.
Hat tip: Clay Jones on the update.
On another side of the country…
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is calling for an apology from a major Atlanta newspaper for publishing a cartoon depicting a commercial airplane as a cattle car.
The American Jewish Committee has taken exception to the above Michael Ramirez cartoon as printed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“This cartoon is offensive and a slap in the face of survivors and all who lost family in the Holocaust,” the AJC asserted. “The Atlanta Journal Constitution owes its readers an immediate apology and explanation.”
Syndicated and printed in many newspapers the Committee has singled out The Journal-Constitution. An item about the cartoon at Forward.com (which I read once and can no longer access) noted that this is not the first time Michael has outraged the Jewish community. Twenty years ago the cartoonist depicted the ugly side of religion that didn’t set right with some:
Still, twenty years between cartoons deemed objectionable doesn’t seem to indicate a pattern.