The British version of The Guardian has deleted a controversial cartoon of BBC chairman Richard Sharp after the illustration was labelled “anti-Semitic”.
The illustration by Martin Rowson was published in the national newspaper on the weekend but it was quickly removed from its website following an uproar over the depiction of Sharp, who is Jewish. The cartoon depicted Sharp leaving the BBC with a box marked Goldman Sachs (the investment bank where he was once employed), a squid and a puppet of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his hands.
The Guardian published a note on its website that read: “The cartoon that was posted here today did not meet our editorial standards and we have decided to remove it from our website.”
Rowson also apologised and said through “carelessness and thoughtlessness I screwed up pretty badly”.
The cartoon depicted Sharp with extremely dark and unflattering features, and was published following his resignation on Friday from the BBC’s top job after he was found to have broken the rules by failing to disclose his close ties with Boris Johnson, who was prime minister at the time of Sharp’s appointment.
In the cartoon, alongside Mr Sharp was a pile of faeces and sitting on top of it was a nude Mr Johnson, yelling at him: “Cheer up matey. I put you down for a peerage in my resignation honours list.”
The Jewish “puppet master” who manipulates events has been a long-running anti-Semitic trope. British politician Sajid Javid condemned the illustration on Twitter and said he was “disappointed to see these tropes in today’s Guardian”.
Read the article by Sophie Elsworth in The Australian.