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Food Politics reports that Rick Friday, a long time cartoonist for Farm News, was dismissed for offending "a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in a cartoon." The political cartoon is critical of Big Ag CEOs, which earned more than 2,000 Iowa farmers combined.
In a Facebook post the cartoonist, Rick Friday, explained:
I am no longer the Editorial Cartoonist for Farm News due to the attached cartoon which was published yesterday. Apparently a large company affiliated with one of the corporations mentioned in the cartoon was insulted and cancelled their advertisement with the paper, thus, resulting in the reprimand of my editor and cancellation of It's Friday cartoons after 21 years of service and over 1090 published cartoons to over 24,000 households per week in 33 counties of Iowa.
I did my research and only submitted the facts in my cartoon.
That's okay, hopefully my children and my grandchildren will see that this last cartoon published by Farm News out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, will shine light on how fragile our rights to free speech and free press really are in the country.
The Des Moines Register explains further:
The CEOs at the ag giants earned about $52.9 million last year, based on Morningstar data. Monsanto and DuPont, the parent of Johnston-based Pioneer, are large seed and chemical companies, and Deere is a large farm equipment manufacturer.
Profits for the three companies, all with large operations across Iowa, also have declined as farm income has been squeezed. After peaking in 2013, U.S. farm income this year is projected to fall to $183 billion, its lowest level since 2002.
It seems like in the U.S. you free to say what you like, but if you offend the wrong people you're free to lose your job despite the protections you are provided and encouraged to use.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday May 06 2016, @01:49AM
These are the broken promises of capitalism as a self-regulating system.
It is the problem when any system gets "true believers", those that have been brainwashed into believing they are supporting the one true god (figuratively). No pure economic system is viable, human nature will guarantee that advantages will be abused to perpetuate the rise of a privileged few. Ideally a government would blend together whatever parts of various systems, be they capitalism, socialism, communism or whatever, to best fit the needs of its constituents to make a better, sustainable life for as much of the citizenry as possible and be willing to change as necessary. In reality, those in power manipulate the "true believers" into bleating like Orwell's sheep against their own interests to push public policy in the direction that best benefits the myopic interests of those in power. Try to explain to capitalist "true believers" in the US that a large part of what they support government doing is funded through socialism (the military for the biggest one). You get met with comments like "That's funded by tax dollars, it's not socialism". They have been brainwashed into believing that socialism is giving money to poor people (really, they mostly mean minorities) so they can live "high on the hog instead of working for a living". Thus any helpful program gets tarred with the socialist label and we end up with a corporate "capitalist" takeover of our government and ultimately, the very wealth of the people.