Political cartoonists on navigating a changing media landscape

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: A picture is worth 1,000 words. It’s a well-worn phrase, of course, but there’s special resonance when applied to editorial cartoons, a centuries-old tradition that’s evolving as the media landscape itself does.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown takes a closer look for our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and our ongoing Canvas coverage.

Ann Telnaes, Political Cartoonist: I will go back and figure out which lines need more definition or strength.

Jeffrey Brown: It’s art in the service of strong political opinion, backed by hours of research. It’s funny, often using caricature, but with serious intent.

Ann Telnaes has been creating editorial cartoons for decades. A self-described liberal, she’s a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2001, a finalist in 2022.

Ann Telnaes: An editorial cartoon, even if the art is strong, if it doesn’t have a strong point of view, then it fails. Of course, if your art’s good, that’s even better, because then that will grab the reader faster.

Jeffrey Brown: Michael Ramirez, who calls himself a constitutional conservative, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, another longtime leading practitioner of this craft.

Michael Ramirez, Political Cartoonist: When people look at the editorial page, it’s probably one of the primary things that they look at.

And, therefore, it has a sort of measure of influence. In a Super Bowl ad, you have got about five seconds to capture their attention, another five seconds to make the sale. The only difference is, instead of selling a commodity or product, I’m selling an idea.

Jeffrey Brown: But, these days, who’s buying? Who’s even seeing the work?

According to The Herb Block Scholarship, named after the legendary Washington Post cartoonist who died in 2001, the number of editorial cartoonists at newspapers, many of them syndicated nationally, dropped from more than 120 to fewer than 30 in the past 25 years.

One challenge, economic, amid the ever-shrinking newspaper business. Another, ideological, amid national divisions so profound that many papers seek to avoid strong satire and opinion.

Ann Telnaes: There’s less tolerance for satire, because satire involves things that aren’t necessarily easy for people to accept, depictions of people, criticizing people.

Jeffrey Brown: For Ann Telnaes, the tolerance factor, hit home directly. Earlier this year, she quit The Washington Post, her employer since 2008, after experiencing a first. One of her cartoons was spiked. It pictured billionaire tech and media executives, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Post, bowing with bags of money before incoming President Trump.

Ann Telnaes: I had not planned to quit. I wanted to continue commenting on what I thought was important. And I just realized I can’t work like that.

Jeffrey Brown: You just felt like there are now things you couldn’t — you’re not allowed to say?

Ann Telnaes: Yes, I thought this was the beginning. This is like, it’s not going to stop here.

Jeffrey Brown: Michael Ramirez’s work appears in both the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which publishes him six times a week, as well as The Washington Post, two times a week.

His moment of confrontation came when a cartoon about Hamas was pulled from the post Web site in 2023, accused of being racist in its caricature.

Michael Ramirez: I do believe that political cartooning is a necessary element in self-governance. Not only is it a catalyst for thought, but it’s a call to action. I want to promote liberty and democracy in our republic.

Sara Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Art, Library of Congress: They are great documents for a moment in time.

Jeffrey Brown: Editorial cartooning itself has a long and varied history dating back to the 1600s.

Sara Duke: This could reach people who weren’t quite literate.

Jeffrey Brown: We got a sampling from Sara Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art at the Library of Congress, which holds 140,000 cartoon prints and drawings.

Sara Duke: Here, we have a group of vultures waiting for the storm.

Jeffrey Brown: So when was this?

Sara Duke: This is 1871. And this is Tammany Hall in New York. It’s the Democratic stronghold. And Boss Tweed ends up fleeing the United States.

Jeffrey Brown: A key point, Duke says, editorial cartoons have always changed with the times and with new technology. And that has affected their impact.

Sara Duke: We had the copper engravings. Maybe a few dozen could be printed and distributed. And then we had the rise of the lithograph, and you had a few thousand. And then you had Harper’s Weekly. Editorial cartoons at the peak of newsprint because they were distributed by syndicates, you’re talking…

Jeffrey Brown: Millions.

Sara Duke: Millions.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Sara Duke: And now you’re talking potentially millions via social media, Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook, all places to ingest editorial cartoons.

Jeffrey Brown: In fact, Ann Telnaes left the post for Substack, an online platform where creators built a direct relationship with their audience through subscriptions.

She now has 91,000 followers, a readership and earnings, but arguably less influence, for now, at least, than at a major newspaper like The Post. One thing she feels she does have, more freedom to say what she wants.

Recently, in the wake of the president appointing himself chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, she depicted him on stage with a conductor’s baton topped by a swastika and portrayed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with a tattoo across his chest reading: “I’m not a defense secretary. I just play one on TV.”

For his part, Michael Ramirez continues to skewer what he sees as progressive dogma and Democratic impotence. But he’s also deeply critical of President Trump’s tariffs and many aspects of the MAGA movement. Here, a Republican elephant on a deserted island says to an abandoned man: “I know how you feel. I’m a free market constitutional conservative.”

Michael Ramirez: Today’s cartoon is really a mirror of where I am. It’s so strange that, in today’s politics, the roles have been reversed, this kind of reactionary populism on one side and then the extreme progressive ideas. And I think most people are sort of caught in between.

Jeffrey Brown: For both cartoonists, the stakes are incredibly high, a test of democratic values, and extend beyond the U.S.

Telnaes spoke recently in the Netherlands for World Press Freedom Day.

Ann Telnaes: Autocrats especially do not like editorial cartoons. They are the great equalizer, and they don’t like being laughed at.

If editorial cartoonists all of a sudden go away, that means something else is following. Other voices will be silenced. And it’s not that great a leap to go from an editorial cartoonist being silenced through threats or whatever to you sitting around having coffee with your friends and you’re joking about politics nowadays, and you’re making fun of the president or the prime minister or your local politician, and somebody reports you.

And then you get questioned about your political beliefs. It’s not that big of a jump.

Jeffrey Brown: An urgent warning from one cartoonist offered with pencil and brush.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Washington, D.C.