Cartoon row brings shame to newspapers

It looks like our trade has gone and blotted its copybook once again.

I refer of course to the Al Nisbet cartoon debacle that has been lighting up public debate this past week. Many column centimetres have been consumed by media commentary on these mean, racist cartoons, and by the frankly shameful tide of support they have elicited in editorial correspondence near and far.

Yet while we can condemn Mr Nisbet for nailing his unpleasant colours to his mast, that is his right. If he wishes to reveal himself as a small-minded chap only too happy to put the boot of privilege into the disadvantaged, he can go for it.

I have to find the greatest fault with Steve Mason, editor of the Marlborough Express. For it was he who allowed the cartoons on to the pages of his newspaper, fundamentally misunderstanding both the role of the editorial cartoon and of newspapers themselves.

We've all grown up with the medium. From David Low and Gordon Minhinnick to Garrick Tremain, Bruce Slane and Trace Hodgson, New Zealand has a proud history of illustrated satire. The key thing about satire, however, and which supporters of Mr Nisbet's work don't seem to get, is that it only works when it is the powerful and privileged being punctured.

It is a means for the powerless to even the scoreboard, if only just a little.

When that power relationship flows the other way, as it does in these cartoons, it is not satire, and becomes mere bullying; the abuse of a privileged position to heap scorn on a disempowered minority through unfair generalisation and the perpetuation of ugly stereotypes.

Steve Mason had no business letting Mr Nisbet's work get any further than his own desk. As public organs, it is not fitting for newspapers to denigrate a section of society that cannot muster money or lawyers to defend itself; nor should we be in the business of - and you'd think this would be a given-saying things that just aren't true, or creating the illusion of debate over a decided issue. In the past I have refused to publish material, even under pressure to do so, that crossed these boundaries.

It's said that if a newspaper's not offending someone, it's not doing its job. The trick is to make sure that's at the expense of the privileged, not the powerless.