The press umpire strikes back

The worst sin a cartoonist can commit is to not be funny. The job description, when all is saved and formatted, is to cause laughter; offence is a byproduct as cartoonists ceaselessly seek to puncture big egos, zero in on the zeitgeist’s idiocies and contradictions, and push the boundaries of comfort. “Cartooning, by its very nature, is always a controversial business,” the late Bill Leak once said. In Australia, we are lucky to have a wonderful tradition of irreverent social commentary although in recent years identity politics and timidity have started to squeeze the artistic canvases of inconvenient truthtellers. Leak was shamefully hounded to the grave by the Human Rights Commission’s PC policing of satire. Last September, the Herald Sun’s Mark Knight weathered global social media outrage and threats of violence, after depicting Serena Williams mid-meltdown in the US Open final. It was a merciless lampooning of the tennis champion’s epic on-court dummy spit, using satire, exaggeration and humour. In a view shared by many cartoonists, Michael Leunig said: “That’s what she looked like. What’s Mark meant to do if he wants to draw Serena having a tirade?” Yet some saw the cartoon as offensive, claiming it was racist and depicted Ms Williams as an ape. Yesterday, the Australian Press Council, our industry’s watchdog, declared the cartoon did not breach standards of practice. The council did not consider that our sister publication “failed to take reasonable steps to avoid causing substantial offence, distress or prejudice, without sufficient justification in the public interest”.

We welcome the council’s commonsense adjudication and lament another joyless, but worrying, instance of control freaks trying to limit the public sphere and free expression.