Gaza cartoon breached Press Council standards
MORE stringent approval procedures for cartoons have been introduced at The Sydney Morning Herald, following the publication of a cartoon last year that was described as “clearly anti-Semitic” by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
The move was revealed on Sunday in a Press Council ruling on the Glen Le Lievre cartoon, which depicted an elderly man with a hook nose and kippah, in an armchair emblazoned with the Star of David, dropping bombs on Gaza by remote control.
Ruling that the image breached its standards of practice, the Press Council found that: “The cartoon’s linkage between the Jewish faith and the Israeli rocket attacks on Gaza was reasonably likely to cause great offence to many readers.
“The Council’s standards of practice were breached on the ground of causing greater offence to readers’ sensibilities than was justifiable in the public interest.”
SMH editor Darren Goodsir, who apologised for the cartoon in an editorial in August last year, told The AJN this week he felt that extra scrutiny was required as part of the approval process for all illustrations.
“Previously section editors had been able to approve illustrations themselves but I raised that, so that myself or the news director, who is effectively my deputy, would need to approve all illustrations,” Goodsir said.
He said that there have been several positive outcomes from what was clearly a bad situation.
“The other thing that I did last year, and intend to do again this year, was work with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) to run a two-hour talk and Q&A session about anti-Semitism.”
Goodsir said the first half was about the history of anti-Semitism, and how the media has played a role in that, while the second half was a very productive conversation between the JBOD presenters and senior editors about how things can be interpreted in different ways.
“It was a very refreshing intellectual and respectful discussion.”
In the editorial from August last year in which he apologised for the cartoon, Goodsir wrote, “A strong view was expressed that the cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre, closely resembled illustrations that had circulated in Nazi Germany.
“These are menacing cartoons that continue to haunt and traumatise generations of Jewish people.
“We apologise unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused.”
SMH agreed with the Press Council that “the cartoon had placed gratuitous emphasis on the Jewishness of its subject, and in doing so had inappropriately emphasised religious persuasion rather than Israeli nationality, thereby causing offence.”
The SMH printed the Press Council’s statement in full online on Saturday.
JOSHUA LEVI
SMH editor Darren Goodsir.
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