The same newspaper that published the Congress Jew tracker in 2015 is now apologizing for sharing an anti-Semitic political cartoon.
The since-retracted drawing depicts a blind, yarmulke-wearing President Trump being led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is portrayed as a large-nosed, Star-of-David-sporting service dog.
David Duke shares the New York Times’ anti-Semitic cartoon: pic.twitter.com/4fqxb03lpo
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) April 27, 2019
“The image was offensive, and it was an error of judgment to publish it,” the New York Times said in its initial response to criticisms of the cartoon.
The newspaper also announced that the above statement would be published as an official editor’s note in Monday’s international print edition. However, despite the admission of an “error of judgment,” some groups are not satisfied.
“Apology not accepted,” the American Jewish Committee said Saturday on social media. “How many [Times] editors looked at a cartoon that would not have looked out of place on a white supremacist website and thought it met the paper’s editorial standards? What does this say about your processes or your decision makers? How are you fixing it?”
The anti-Semitic cartoon, which was published only in the newspaper’s international edition, appeared originally in last Thursday’s opinion section, right next to a column by Tom Friedman.
On Sunday, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy issued a lengthier explanation separate from the paper’s initial “error of judgment” statement. Unlike the note published in Monday’s international edition, Murphy’s remarks contain an actual attempt to apologize for the cartoon.
“We are deeply sorry for the publication of an anti-Semitic political cartoon last Thursday in the print edition of The New York Times that circulates outside of the United States, and we are committed to making sure nothing like this happens again. Such imagery is always dangerous, and at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, it’s all the more unacceptable,” she said. “We have investigated how this happened and learned that, because of a faulty process, a single editor acting without adequate oversight downloaded the syndicated cartoon and made the decision to include it on the Opinion page. The matter remains under review, and we are evaluating our internal processes and training. We anticipate significant changes.”
The Times reported that the cartoon came from Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes.
It was “originally published by Expresso, a newspaper in Lisbon. It was then picked up by CartoonArts International, a syndicate for cartoons from around the world,” the paper explained. “The New York Times Licensing Group sells content from CartoonArts and other publishers along with material from The New York Times to news sites and other customers.”
In 2015, the Times published — and then quietly removed — a list tracking which Jewish U.S. lawmakers opposed the Iran nuclear deal. The list included categories that read “Jewish?” and “State and estimated Jewish population.” Later, in 2017, the Times published a report insinuating the Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement Chabad might be a puppet organization for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, the Times published a clearly anti-Semitic cartoon.
At what point do we draw a trend line?
