This week’s Graphic History Tour marches bravely against media censorship in the United States.
As a political cartoonist who has just been featured among a few dozen other political cartoonists, Your Humble Scribbler has a strong anti-censorship interest in editorial cartoons in particular.
During the First Golden Age of my profession, in the late 18th and early 18th centuries, newspaper editors saw the popularity and influence of Thomas Nast and Johannes Keppler’s cartoons for national weeklies and hired some of the best editorial cartoonists to grace the covers of their newspapers. And not coincidentally, to push the political agendas of the editors.
| “No Honest Man Needs Scary Cartoons” by Homer Davenport in New York DailyApril 22, 1897 |
Local politicians did not like being lampooned on those covers. Angered by Homer Davenport’s caricatures of influential Republican Mark Hanna, New York political boss Senator Thomas Platt pushed a bill through the state Assembly to ban cartoon depictions of real people without their consent.
Davenport drew the parallel with Platt’s predecessor, William Tweed, who had complained that, although his constituents didn’t read newspapers, they saw “those bloody photographs.” Platt’s bill did not pass, but that did not stop similar bills from cropping up elsewhere.
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| “The Governor Has His Revenge” by Robert Edgren in San Francisco ExaminerFebruary 25, 1899 |
A copycat bill from California Republicans failed to pass in its first round, but was approved during the following legislative session and signed by Republican Governor-elect Henry Tifft Gage. As in New York, the partisan Democratic cartoons in Hearst’s newspapers were a big boost to the bill; specifically, a caricature of Gage being led on a leash by railroad magnate CP Huntington.
After being signed into law, California’s anti-cartoon bill was ridiculed and ignored into obscurity. Hearst cartoonist Robert Edgren offered an unusual reason for Governor Gage to sign the anti-cartoon bill: that cartoonists were No draw it more.
Frankly, the man was a cartoonist’s dream. Too bad they fired him after one term.
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| by Walter McDougall in AmericanPhiladelphia, January 30, 1903 |
Responding to daily cartoons in Philadelphia American by Charles Nelan depicting gubernatorial candidate Samuel Pennypacker as the pet parrot of Republican Party chief Senator Matthew Quay, Pennypacker’s inaugural address demanded censure of the “discredited” American. Accommodatingly, State Representative Frederick Pusey introduced a bill prohibiting the publication of any cartoon.
“Portray, describe or represent any person, whether by distortion, insinuation or otherwise, in the form or likeness of a beast, bird, fish, insect or other non-human animal, thereby tending to expose such person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule.”
He AmericanThe other editorial cartoonist, Walt McDougall, responded with an extended cartoon at the top of the cover depicting Quay, Pusey and Pennypacker as a series of inanimate objects. (I have folded his cartoon to fit a square format.) In an accompanying editorial, McDougall exhorted his fellow cartoonists: “Every cartoonist has a Noah’s Ark full of worn-out, broken, and decrepit animals, insects, and so on, but the field of fresh vegetables is intact.”
However, Pusey’s bill passed the Pennsylvania legislature and was signed into law by Pennypacker. It was quickly repealed after Pennypacker was defeated in the following election.
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| by Frank Spangler in montgomery [Ala.] AdvertiserFebruary 3, 1915 |
As part of a package of election regulation laws, the Alabama legislature considered a bill sponsored by Samuel D. Weakly that prohibited the caricature of any “prominent” man or politician. “It will make the average newspaper reader smile,” he said. Advertiser editorialized,
“that a sacred class of officials and office seekers should be formed, because they are the bulk of the prominent people whom newspapers caricature. A caricature is a semi-editorial expression and a powerful method of reaching public opinion, because ridicule and sarcasm are vividly presented to the eye. Both weapons are enormously effective on the stump, and there is no reason why the press should be deprived of its use. Indeed, a bill of this kind is “a clear effort to muzzle the press, and is an infringement of its constitutional powers.”
As far as I have been able to determine, Weakly’s proposal did not make it into the final bill. The Act (#171, § 11) required cartoons expressing an opinion on any candidate or election issue to include “in their face” the name of the newspaper’s owner or the CEO of its corporation.
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| “The Light That Must Not Fail” by Harry Murphy California. May 5, 1917 |
The entry of the United States into World War I opened the doors to government censorship of newspapers, and not just their cartoons.
The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime to publish with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or promote the success of its enemies during times of war; causing or attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, neglect of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States; or to intentionally obstruct military recruitment or enlistment. The law also gave the Postmaster General authority to confiscate publications he determined violated the law.
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| “That Wooden One” by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily EagleMay 5, 1917 |
The United States was drawn into the European war due in part to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German submarine. Nelson Harding, in a single-column cartoon about the Brooklyn EagleOn the front page, the incident turned against the defenders of press censorship.
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| “Is this somewhere in Germany or somewhere in the United States?” by Beaumont Fairbank in Brooklyn Sunday Eagle, May 5, 1918 |
In the same newspaper on the same day, Beaumont Fairbank drew his cartoon in support of an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 introduced by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA), which read:
“No newspaper, magazine, periodical, circular or brochure which is printed wholly or partially in the German language should be permitted to use the mail.”
Fairbank was not alone in defending government censorship of the foreign-language press. While that amendment was not included in the final bill, local officials banned German-language newspapers in several cities in New Jersey and Long Island.
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| “If Our Ancestors Could See Us Now” by John Lenz in Herald, Chicago, October 31, 1917 |
The protest against this censorship was limited almost exclusively to the foreign language newspapers themselves. The banner behind Congress in the John Lenz cartoon translates as “Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Right of Assembly.” The rolled scrolls beneath George Washington represent the Constitution and the First Amendment.
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| “Oh, Pitiful Situation” by Arthur Young in MassesNew York, September 1917 |
The Creel Commission also employed the United States Post Office to censor the publication of material contrary to the official line. The Art Young cartoon above appeared in the September issue of Marxist, Antiwar Masses after Burleson’s USPS declared that the August edition “could not be mailed under the Act of June 15, 1917.”
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| “A Convenient Perch” by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, May 1918 |
If Art Young expected other publications to show solidarity with MassesI would be sadly wrong. The Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel created a Bureau of Cartoons, which produced a weekly newsletter for cartoonists to direct their attention to the issues the Wilson administration wanted them to draw on. In general, the cartoonists and their editors agreed.
Masses It ceased publication after its November/December edition.
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| “It’s Nothing Important” by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee JournalDecember 20, 1972 |
Fast forward more than half a century, President Richard Nixon tried very hard to force the media to slant the news the way he wanted it to be reported. His administration enlisted the Federal Communications Commission to pressure television networks, cut funding to public broadcasting and take newspapers to court. However, it was hampered by the lack of a cooperative Congress or courts.
Instead, his communications team founded Fox News.
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| “Ask Me Anything” by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, November 15, 1973 |
Meanwhile, we learned that President Richard Nixon maintained an “enemies list” of critics of his administration, including many journalists. Nixon had always had a testy relationship with the media long before he was elected president. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, it was revealed that he used the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service to open investigations against people on that list, although at least he never banned Jack Anderson, Daniel Schorr, or Mary McGrory from attending White House press conferences.
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| for Bergeoons blog, August 2018 |
There has been no attack on the media and the facts that could rival the campaign by Donald Trump’s absolutely corrupt regime to quash any reporting that does not flatter the beloved hoaxer. In both terms of his presidency, government websites were deleted, responsible journalists were banned first from the Pentagon and now the White House, and both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission were weaponized against the media, this time with widespread compliance by Congress and the Supreme Court.
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| for Q Syndicate, February 2025 |
Unless Trump himself approves, it’s all just fake news.
“They just give me bad publicity, press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I’d think maybe they should take away their license… That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative in years or something, someone said. But when you go back, take a look, all they’re doing is bashing Trump. They’re giving me all this bad press, and they’re getting a license. When you have a network and they have late night shows and all they do is bashing Trump, that’s all they do: that license, they’re not allowed to do that!” — Donald Joffrey Trump, September 16, 2025