Re: Why we shouldn't have run Mike Marland's cartoon
Mr. Pride,
I am somewhat gratified by your light retraction of Mike Marland's incredibly offensive editorial cartoon. However, your continued support of Mr. Marland and his mindset of using the incredible atrocity of September 11, 2001 to misrepresent President Bush's budgetary policy, in my opinion, nullifies any and all effort spent on your part. You might respect his talent as an artist but his judgement needs to be seriously questioned. He might even be a personal friend of yours, but the publication of the cartoon represents gross editorial malpractice on your part. It is as offensive as printing a caricature of Aunt Jemima eating fried chicken and watermelon with a welfare check stuffed in her back pocket to represent Black History Month.
You make several errors in your retraction.
Though Mr. Marland's cartoon might be copyrighted, it does not prevent fair use by private citizens in the course of public debate. As a seasoned editor, you should know better. That is basic Journalism Law 3001 at the Manship School of Journalism at Louisiana State University -- a fortunate experience of mine in college. I happened to be one of the individuals that reproduced the image under fair use on the World Wide Web for debate over its content and not commercial gain. Feel free to engage me in legal action over this. I would welcome the occasion to take this to court and further promote your editorial common sense to a national audience as the case would no doubt become. Reply to me and I will send over the relevant contact information so we can legally engage in your perceived copyright infringement. However, I feel you will want to sweep this major editorial error as quickly under the proverbial carpet as possible -- as I am sure your publisher and advertisers who financially supported this travesty would.
As an editor of a private publication, you have no ability to censor. Censorship can only occur by the actions of a governmental body. Your decisions as an editor are not a function of censorship but of the natural editorial process. Everyday of your career as an editor, you make decisions as to what should and should not appear within the pages of the Concord Monitor. That should be a function of your experience and common sense. If you wished to have excluded Mike Marland's repugnant editorial cartoon, he would still be free to publish it in other publications without fear of governmental intervention. You give yourself undue flattery over this statement and your ability to prevent Mr. Marland's constitutionally protected ability to express himself. We all have the right to speak but not to be heard.
You claim at some point in the future that the September 11th atrocity will be legitimate fuel for editorial cartoonists. Do you think the sunken grave of the U.S. Arizona is legitimate editorial fuel after 60 years? Would editorial common sense allow you to publish a Mike Marland editorial cartoon that desecrated the grave of the brave men that perished from the unprovoked assault of the Japanese on December 7, 1941? I doubt it would nor do I think in the future the World Trade Center will be legitimate fodder for cantankerous editorial cartoonists. However, your editorial decision in publishing the Mike Marland cartoon has already crossed that line. A decision, I feel, you will carry as a heavy burden the rest of your career.
The correct response by you to this editorial error should have been a full apology without reservations or explanation. To further qualify your decision in the editorial process does nothing but excuse the action as if it was the mistake of spilling milk on a clean table. I would suggest that Concord Monitor take the advertising revenue from the Friday edition and pledge it to the thousands upon thousands of my grieving neighbors through one of the various charities seeking to meet their needs.
Sincerely yours,
Robert M. Toups, Jr.
(personal address information deleted for WWW publication)