In a CBS News story about Barack Obama's monumental task to restore credibility to the White House, CBS points to an editorial cartoon that seems to sum up their entire story in one single image. The problem is, they don't even bother to mention the artist.
"A cartoon from the Houston Chronicle caught the flavor," the story begins, not bothering to mention that the cartoon was penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson.
The story goes on to describe the cartoon in lieu of showing it or providing a link:
A man standing in front of a burning building labeled "the economy" is shouting into a phone: "My house is on fire, how soon can you get here?"
A fireman who looks like Barack Obama answers, "January 20th."
This story illustrates a giant pet peeve of mine as a cartoonist. Whenever a news story uses an editorial cartoon to clarify its point, they very rarely credit the editorial cartoonist by name, choosing instead to go with the "a cartoon from x publication" instead.
Would someone ever quote something out of a Maureen Down column just by saying, "In a column that appeared today in the New York Times..."
This happened to me recently in a New York Times story about a cartoon I had drawn for PolitickerNH.com about the New Hampshire senate race:
Mrs. Shaheen’s risk-averse approach to the issues helps explain why a cartoon posted on the politickerNH.com Web site ridicules Mrs. Shaheen as the driver of a car stopped at a green light, refusing to move without knowing what the polls say.
It's too bad they couldn't give me a namecheck, or even pay me for the right to show the cartoon. But I guess it's all right.
After all, I'm only a cartoonist.
