A free press has to be a fearless press, but in New Brunswick — where the newspapers, like many things, are Irving-owned — there doesn’t appear to be much of that these days.
In Saturday’s edition of The Chronicle Herald, Donald Trump was the subject of two editorial cartoons from the proficient pen of Michael de Adder. One was heart-wrenching — a poignant depiction of human tragedy and the inhumanity of one man’s response. The other was simply prescient.
But in de Adder’s native province of New Brunswick, neither of those cartoons would appear in the Irving’s Brunswick News papers, which include the three city dailies and most of the weeklies.
The Irving-owned papers have a standing — if unacknowledged — prohibition on editorial cartoons that might offend the American president who lies as a first impulse; cozies up to murderous tyrants; is an accused serial rapist; finds moral equivalency between neo-fascist white supremacists and those who oppose them; relied on Russia’s help to win the presidency in 2016 and is open to more of the same in 2020, and who does violence to the foundational principles of American democracy with a regularity that’s no longer shocking but should be.
At the end of last week, Brunswick News cancelled de Adder’s contract — he’s been supplying the New Brunswick papers with editorial cartoons for 17 years.
His cartoon — one of those in Saturday’s Herald — depicting the lifeless bodies of Oscar Alberto Martínez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie, face down in the weeds of the Rio Grande River where their lives ended in a desperate attempt to reach the relative safety of America, went viral across Canada and the United States over the weekend.
The cartoon has the corpulent president, golf club in hand, standing over the prostrate bodies of the dead Salvadoran man and child, asking: “Do you mind if I play through?” The cartoon captures in stark simplicity Trump’s callous disregard for the inhumanity of his border policies.
The prescient offering from de Adder’s pen, also published Saturday, has Trump running a carnival shooting gallery called Enemy of the People where players take aim at targets marked with the letters P-R-E-S-S.
Brunswick News would be one of those carnie shootists, taking aim at Trump’s numero uno nemesis, the free and fearless press, in this case personified by Michael de Adder.
Brunswick News, of course, denies that de Adder’s contract was revoked because of his Trump cartoon commentaries. They would like us to believe that the papers are going with another editorial cartoonist — a readers’ favourite.
Their defence strains credulity, given that de Adder is a multiple-award-winning journalist and is generally considered to be one of the nation’s best at his craft. (Alongside Bruce MacKinnon, whose brilliant work also adorns the pages of these newspapers.)
And, whether de Adder got the Irving axe as a result of his recent, perfectly aimed darts directed at Trump or not, the fact remains the New Brunswick papers appear to broach no criticism of Trump, and one can only speculate as to the reasons.
Irving’s vast industrial holdings — including the Halifax shipyard — are international in reach and the United States would be among the corporate giant’s most vital markets.
You can’t blame a corporation for protecting its economic interests, until that protection becomes censorship of legitimate comment in its newspapers. Once you’re there, the company’s financial interests are in direct conflict with the purpose of the newspapers — to inform without fear or favour, to hold those in power accountable, and to provoke readers to think critically about the world they live in.
The New Brunswick newspapers’ apparent prohibition on content that might offend a president who is reliably offensive on a daily basis is both patently absurd — do they honestly think Trump cares, or even sees, what’s printed in the Fredericton Gleaner? — and an attack on free and fair journalism.
Like Republicans in Congress and sycophantic world leaders, newspapers that give Trump a free ride are complicit in the normalization of his aberrant, destructive behaviour. The man is a menace in too many ways to even enumerate here, and newspapers that refuse to say so are actively misleading their readers.
Michael de Adder is saddened that his family and lifelong friends back home in New Brunswick will no longer be able to see his work in their local newspapers. New Brunswickers will miss him, and they need to ask if censorship of legitimate and fair comment is a feature of their province’s newspapers.
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