27 October 2023
Cartoonist Steve Bell and British newspaper The Guardian have parted company after 40 years. The paper will not be renewing the cartoonist’s contract next April, and will not be accepting any more cartoons from him until then.
The news, which has been the subject of messages and an interview with the cartoonist but no comment from the newspaper, and which comes against a backdrop of geopolitical tension, has prompted numerous reactions and analyses, from the UK to Israel and Africa.
While the newspaper has not commented publicly on the reasons for its decision, many observers have interpreted the reasons for the dismissal in the light of the cartoonist’s Twitter/X postings, in which Steve Bell mentioned the newspaper’s refusal to accept one of his cartoons dated 9 October 2023.
Just to explain. I filed this cartoon around 11am, possibly my earliest ever. Four hours later, on a train to Liverpool I received an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message "pound of flesh"… pic.twitter.com/kSfmfzlmhy
— Steve Bell (@BellBelltoons) October 9, 2023
The cartoon was drawn after the Hamas attacks on Israel, just as Benjamin Netanyahu was announcing Israeli reprisals against Gaza. It shows the Israeli Prime Minister preparing to cut his own abdomen where he bears a Gaza-shaped mark (in reference to a 1966 cartoon by David Levine depicting US President Lyndon B. Johnson bearing a scar reminiscent of Vietnam). In the messages, the cartoonist says that after submitting the cartoon, he received a “strangely cryptic message” during a phone call with a member of the Guardian team, referring to a “pound of flesh”. Taken from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, the reference is now widely regarded as anti-Semitic. The cartoonist rejects this interpretation.
Cartooning for Peace deplores the fact that the career of a cartoonist of Steve Bell’s stature has been damaged in this way. The reasons why a newspaper refuses a cartoon or terminates the artist’s contract, and whether or not the artist contests the decision, are a matter for both parties. But it has to be said that this episode is not an isolated one, and is a reminder of the constant and often disproportionate pressure faced by the media and cartoonists who publish press cartoons in the digital age. This pressure inevitably leads to hasty judgements, both within editorial departments and in the way they are treated online.
