Rob Rogers was fired after the newspaper’s management objected to some of his sketches of President Donald Trump. (Facebook)
A veteran editorial cartoonist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been fired after the newspaper’s management objected to some of his sketches of President Donald Trump. Rob Rogers, a Pulitzer Prize finalist who had been with the Post-Gazette for 25 years, announced his own ouster on Twitter on Thursday.
Speaking to the NYT, Rogers said over the past three months, about 19 cartoons or proposals for cartoons were rejected by either the editorial page editor, Keith Burris, or the publisher, John Robinson Block. Over the course of a typical year, he noted, only a couple of his submissions would be rejected.
Rogers, whose career as a political cartoonist in Pittsburgh has spanned 34 years, said about 90 per cent of the rejected cartoons were Trump-related. The other caricatures that were spiked involved issues linked to the president, such as the cancellation of “Roseanne” (an American sit-com) or NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem.
However, Rogers seemed to have the backing of Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto, who said the cartoonist’s sacking had sent a wrong message to press freedom at a time when the President has been repeatedly attacking the media. “The move by the leadership of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to fire Rob Rogers after he drew a series of cartoons critical of President Trump is disappointing and sends the wrong message about press freedoms in a time when they are under siege,” Peduto said.
The trigger behind Rogers’ sacking was a cartoon that depicted Trump laying a RIP wreath before a tomb reading “Truth, Honor, Rule of Law” in March. Following this, the paper rejected six of his ideas in a row, including one that showed the president separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents.
The firing is the latest controversy involving the Post-Gazette’s editorial pages. In January, The Post-Gazette and its sister paper, The Toledo Blade, published an editorial titled “Reason as Racism” that defended President Trump’s stance on immigration despite his profane description of countries like Haiti or those in Africa. Burris, who authored the editorial, was panned by critics but it was just the start of a rightward shift by the once-liberal editorial page.
In March, the papers’ owner, Block Communications, merged the editorial pages of the two publications, appointing Burris as editor, vice president and editorial director. He has since written several editorials praising the president. Speaking to NYT, Burris asserted his goal was to make sure The Post-Gazette was independent and thoughtful in its approach, without any ideological intent.
“I’m certainly not in Trump’s base and I don’t think our publisher is, we just don’t think he’s Satan,” Burris said. “We never said ‘don’t do Trump cartoons.’ A Trump cartoon every day is not interesting, and a Trump cartoon every day that’s not funny and is just enraged is not particularly effective,” NYT quoted Burris as saying.