Sunday, July 3, 2016

Fired Cartoonist Returns to Farm News

From KCCI Des Moines.


Rick Friday, a newspaper cartoonist fired after a company pulled their advertisements over a cartoon slamming big business, is back drawing cartoons for the very newspaper that fired him.

Friday said it was difficult to go back at first, but he did it to prove a point.

“By me returning, I think that sets an example,” Friday said.

Friday was fired two months ago for a cartoon criticizing big business in farming. Friday's editor at Farm News sent him an email saying he was cutting off their 21-year relationship after a seed company, offended by Friday's cartoon, pulled their ads.



“My cartoon was basically the truth, and in a sense, it was censored, or I was censored," Friday said.

KCCI broke the story, and it went viral.

“My world's spinning a little faster than the rest of the world right now in 60 days,” Friday said. “It's been life changing.”

Jobs offers have been pouring in. Friday said he has drawn 160 cartoons within the last two month, compared to the 52 per year he drew for Farm News.

“My once voice of injustice turned out to be it deployed an army of a thousand," Friday said. “Worldwide support.”

Friday said he signed a one-year contract with Farm News.

“They called (and) apologized,” Friday said. “Quite often they apologized.”

Friday said at first, he did not want to go back to Farm News but decided to return to show his supporters truth cannot be censored.

“I am doing the right thing, because if I wouldn't have went back, then those people that tried to censor me, they would basically have been successful in what they tried to do in the beginning,” Friday said. “I'm not going to change. I have no need to change.”

Farm News publisher Larry Bushman was unavailable for comment.

The TV report here.

UPDATE

"Why the controversy over an Iowa cartoonist is no laughing matter" in the Columbia Journalism Review.

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