Billionaire newspaper monopolist family cancels editorial cartoonist after anti-Trump drawing

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/30/it-burned-burned-burned.html

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Fortunately, this cartoon has been blowing up my social media for the past 24 hours. It is punchy, insightful, to the point, and disturbing in the best possible way. It is everything a political cartoon should be, and now the whole world is going to see it.

I think Mr de Adder will land on his feet.

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I presume Canada has antitrust/anti-monopoly laws? :thinking: If this family really controls a big portion of media in New Brunswick that seems like an issue.

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The Irvings simply must meet Ms. Streisand!

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The New Brunswick HR Department tells De Adder the bad news…

image

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My only concern with the cartoon is it features Trump asking for something.

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It’s a great example of dark humor. Is it offensive, uncomfortable, macabre, and outrageous? Yup. But damn does it ever make a powerful statement. Golf clap to the cartoonist for this.

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Ha ha ha ha.

You bet we do. Its called the Competition Act. Its very aspirational. Doesn’t apply to the Irvings of course, but its there, ready to be used just as soon as someone it actually applies to turns up.

Just like the US has a constitutional Foreign Emoluments Clause.

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Unfortunately, like most laws, it applies only to those who cannot afford to fight it. And rights only apply to those rich enough to defend them. Thought maybe Canada was better than we are, but human nature is what it is.

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Truth and humour have such a great relationship.

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There’s really a good market for Billionaire Butt Hurt Cream, I’m pondering it, strongly.

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My initial instinct was that it was being overly generous to Trump - and your comment made me realize why. (The rest of it, premised on the idea that Trump would be unconcerned by dead immigrants is just factual true.)

When the truth is that the president is a psychopath, “satire” like this isn’t so much hyperbolic as just imagining the outcome of a hypothetical scenario. Though I suspect, in reality, Trump would just be annoyed by dead immigrant children on his golf course, if they were interfering with his game.

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I wondered which chain this was. Now it all makes sense.

I remember [mumble]ty years ago, doing media studies and we landed on the Irvings. They own almost everything out there, skating around anti-trust laws with the use of subsidiaries. Even then there were countless examples of stories being spiked the minute it came down to anything less than glowing of anything Irving. They were the classic example of a) the need for an independent media and b) how much the politics of the owners get reflected in the paper.

Unfortunately, when you’re used to decades of being able to dictate news coverage in your little corner of the world, you get used to not caring what those other places publish. It doesn’t matter because no one here will see it. Which worked great until social media became a thing. Even Elections Canada gave up in the face of social media.

Finding out it’s the Irvings is, honestly, the least surprising thing I will read all day.

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That is a pretty good summary of how China and North Korea handle news, plus control of social media of course. Actually, Murdoch may have perfected it, in as much as it currently can be, in Western media with Fox and his other holdings. They don’t prevent you from accessing other media, they just make sure you won’t, and if you are accidently “infected,” they make sure you are effectively immunized against it.

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Oh yeah.

The difference between us and Russia / China is that our media is controlled and censored by corporate interests, rather than the government.

Which, incidentally, is largely responsible for the rightward shift. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you control the propaganda.

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Or when you suppress truth.

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Why not both?
Seriously, one requires the other. You look pretty silly otherwise.

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Is there a reason why the bottom of the cartoon is cut off in the BoingBoing article?

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