{"id":3418,"date":"2020-03-20T08:40:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3418"},"modified":"2020-03-20T14:33:55","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T18:33:55","slug":"blaming-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3418","title":{"rendered":"Blaming &#8220;The Media&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"407\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JPA231.jpg\" alt=\"Blaming &quot;The Media&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-3419\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JPA231.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/JPA231-300x218.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me be clear: Opinion pieces are not all inherently bad. Good ones can provide context for&nbsp;the complex concepts and hard to understand situations. The late, great Jeff MacNelly once said this about editorial cartoonists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;We violate all the rules of journalism. We misquote and slander and distort. [But] the interesting thing is, the political cartoonist usually, if he\u2019s any good, gets a hell of a lot closer to the truth than a responsible reporter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Opinion pieces can take short-cuts. Actual journalists have rules and standards and ethics, which I&#8217;m told can really slow a person down! And they can be annoying.\u00a0Do\u00a0reporters\u00a0have to keep asking that\u00a0politician I support those stupid questions? Do they have to keep digging? It&#8217;s not their business. Oh, but it is. It&#8217;s vital that\u00a0journalists do the hard work because who else is going to vet the truth?\u00a0You certainly can&#8217;t count on the opinion people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You may have noticed the absence of my cartoon last week on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michiganradio.org\/\">MichiganRadio.org<\/a>. It was actually a pretty good example of where opinion and real news tangle. In the cartoon I\u00a0suggested\u00a0that our country was strong enough to survive this current disaster (not just the coronavirus pandemic but also the Trump Administration). It&#8217;s one thing to write it, it&#8217;s another to put it in a cartoon where humor is implied.\u00a0With events moving at light speed these days, there was no way of\u00a0knowing how the context might shift, so my editor thought it best not to run it (and I agreed). I certainly didn&#8217;t want something seen as a glib opinion distract from the actual news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And context has changed quite a bit. Looking at\u00a0the cartoon a week later, the most objectionable thing about it may be that I drew the two characters too close together \u2014 definitely not at a proper social distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please be safe and take care of each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me be clear: Opinion pieces are not all inherently bad. Good ones can provide context for&nbsp;the complex concepts and hard to understand situations. The late, great Jeff MacNelly once said this about editorial cartoonists: &#8220;We violate all the rules of journalism. We misquote and slander and distort. [But] the interesting thing is, the political [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrewheller-com","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3422,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418\/revisions\/3422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}