Cartoonist draws Pittsburgh paper’s firing
In recent weeks, the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette spiked numerous cartoons by Rob Rogers that were critical of President Donald Trump, as The Washington Post reported last week.
On Thursday, PostGazette management resolved the matter by firing Rogers, who had been the paper’s political cartoonist for a quarter-century.
Rogers tweeted word of his dismissal Thursday afternoon.
Neither the Post-Gazette publisher, John Robinson Block, nor Rogers’ supervising editor, Keith Burris, immediately replied to Washington Post requests Thursday for comment.
The paper’s editorial page had increasingly shown support for Trump, according to Rogers and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, among others.
Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto reacted to the sacking of Rogers with a sharp statement Thursday, saying: “The move today by the leadership of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to fire Rob Rogers after he drew a series of cartoons critical of President Trump is disappointing, and sends the wrong message about press freedoms in a time when they are under siege.”
The National Cartoonists Society, which represents hundreds of member cartoonists and other comicsindustry professionals, said Thursday in a statement, “The NCS supports Rob in his efforts to maintain his integrity in expressing his ideas and viewpoint, and stands against any form of censorship or suppression of free speech.”
During his 34 years as a political cartoonist in Pittsburgh, Rogers had two to three cartoons a year, on average, killed by editors.
But Rogers told Comic Riffs last week that he had 19 cartoons or ideas spiked this year, under Burris. And from May 25 to June 4, not a single one of his cartoons was deemed worthy of publishing in the paper. One of Rob Rogers’s cartoons that was recently killed by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editors. Rogers was fired by the paper after being its political cartoonist for 25 years.