The Australian Financial Review’s David Rowe has adjusted a cartoon after complaints that it depicted the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in an anti-Semitic trope.
Both Rowe and the Financial Review apologise for unintended hurt and offence caused by the cartoon published in last weekend’s AFR Weekend.
At the same time, the Financial Review and Rowe maintain that the cartoon contained no Jewish references, even though they understood why some readers had interpreted the imagery differently.
As a masthead, the Financial Review abhors anti-Semitism, from whatever part of the political spectrum and celebrates the contribution of people of Jewish faith and background to modern Australia, especially to modern Australian business.
Rowe and the Financial Review’s editor in chief Michael Stutchbury agreed the imagery around the depiction of Mr Frydenberg, however interpreted, was of no consequence to the meaning of the cartoon, which was an anti-racist “black lives matter” commentary.
It would be perverse if a non-essential part of a cartoon that raised complaints of unintended racism ended up censoring a cartoon designed to make an anti-racist commentary.
That led to the unusual decision to accordingly amend the cartoon online. The cartoon published on the weekend’s editorial and opinion pages explicitly drew on the Emanuel Phillips Fox painting of Captain Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1770.
Read the article in the Australian Financial Review.