7th September 2024
It’s now official. On August 31, 2026, Australian editorial cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, a member of Cartooning for Peace, announced that she was leaving the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age after decades of collaboration.
How did it come to this? A cartoon published on January 7, 2026, in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, led to her being pilloried in Australia, in a case that raises concerns about the space still allocated to freedom of expression in an increasingly polarized and violent world.
In recent months, Cathy Wilcox has indeed had to navigate the murky waters of polarized political debate and the instrumentalization of accusations of antisemitism—a phenomenon whose growing danger to the profession has been highlighted in our latest report on the situation of threatened cartoonists around the world. In this context, criticizing the excesses of the State of Israel and its political leaders has become a high-risk endeavor, while media outlets that fully embrace their editorial responsibility in the face of controversy when publishing a cartoon are becoming increasingly rare.
Cartooning for Peace salutes the professionalism and integrity of Cathy Wilcox, a talented editorial cartoonist who is leaving with her head held high and who will continue to depict the world as she sees it.
Cartoon: Cathy Wilcox (Australia)
