Journo Trade Rags Whitewash Cartoonist Plagiarism Scandal

The scandal over cartoonist Bill Day’s plagiarism, recycling of his own previous cartoons and self-plagiarism is a teachable moment: an opportunity for cartoonists to reassess basic standards, readers to see that editorial cartoonists police their own, and for editors and  publishers – not to mention prize committees – to begin to understand the difference between high-quality artists with integrity and cheating hacks. Unfortunately, the main news outlets that cover the world of editorial cartooning and journalism are falling down on the job, alternatingly muddying the waters with stories that imply that clarity is impossible in such situations, or – in at least one case – deliberately obfuscating and downright lying about the facts.

Many of us were looking forward to the coverage of the Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, who writes the Comics Riffs  blog for the paper in the  nation’s capital.  Unfortunately, Cavna buried the lede in a piece that put my friend and colleague Scott Stantis’ wondering aloud about a New York Post cover at the top of an article that should have emphasized Bill Day’s perfidy, and then gave an excessive amount of space to disassembling by Daryl Cagle, Day’s syndicator and champion in an attempt to raise $35,000 via Indiegogo in order to subsidize the below-standard low rates that Cagle pays to Day.

Over at Poynter, another leading trade industry source pretty much everyone in the field, Andrew Beaujon didn’t just fumble the ball – he threw it away:

“Unauthorized interpolation? Ham-fisted aggregation? Media-blogger-baiting transgression? Whatever it is, it seems like a lesser light to shine on Day’s work.”

What the hell? What can you call a cartoonist who finds a piece of artwork online, one that is clearly labeled with copyright and credited information, Photoshop’s the image while stripping out the credits and bylines, pastes it into his own work, adds a smidge of his own drawing, and then has the gall to sign the thing? He isn’t an unauthorized interpolator or a ham-fisted aggregatoe or a transgressor. He is a plagiarist, pure and simple. Well, maybe not so pure.

But by far the most shameful dereliction of duty is by the once widely-respected trade magazine Editor & Publisher.  For, for the days of David Astor, a gentlemanly scribe who steered the magazine through several decades as newspapers and the syndication business crumbled. Astor has been put out to farm, relegated to writing for a local newspaper in New Jersey, and his old spot is now occupied by Rob Tornoe, a cartoonist, blogger and – wait for this – employee of Daryl Cagle. Yes, that Daryl Cagle. The guy who syndicates Bill Day.

According to reliable sources, Rob is a de facto full-time employee of Cagle Cartoons. In an email to me he categorically denied this, but the argument appears to hang on semantics. In order to avoid paying full benefits, Cagle, like many other American employers, deems Rob to be an independent contractor. But the fact that he gets a 1099 instead of a W2 at tax time doesn’t change the fact that he derives a substantial amount of his income – probably most of it – from a person he covers in the media. Not only has he written about Cagle and his cartoonists, he wrote about the Bill Day fundraising campaign without informing his readers of his fiduciary relationship.

When the scandal broke 12 days ago, E&P suddenly went silent. Of course, no one should really wonder why. After all, according to those same sources,  Rob himself originally conceived of and personally loaded the Day fund-raising campaign up to the website of Indiegogo. They further allege that Rob continues to play a leading role in managing not only the campaign but the post-plagiarism scandal crisis response. For example, after I posted a comment about the scandal to the Indiegogo page Rob apparently mentioned to Cagle that it was possible to delete it. It has since vanished.

Now E&P – or more accurately Rob – is finally breaking his silence about the scandal in an article whose dishonesty is so over-the-top that you either have to laugh or give up on journalism as an honest profession. To start: “(Full disclosure: I am a Cagle.com contributor)”

Hilarious! “Contributor” implies that his cartoons or columns are distributed through Daryl’s syndicate. No, Rob. Rob actually works for them. Whether he works 40 or 20 or 10 hours a week, this is the sort of thing that every writer knows he or she is supposed to reveal. Readers deserve and want to know when there are conflicts of interest. Why E&P continues to employ Rob is baffling beyond belief. Sort of like Cagle himself. Why is he keeping an acknowledged plagiarist on the syndication list?

By the way: the anonymous blogger who maintains the That Cartoon Critic Tumblr blog continues to post new examples of plagiarism. Right now we are at number 56.

Rob’s piece is a masterpiece of obfuscation, smoke and mirrors: “Further clouding debate…others see it as simply an opportunity for time-constrained cartoonists to take a shortcut…even Walt Disney employed similar time-saving methods.” Newsflash: editorial cartooning is different. No editor who subscribes to a syndicated editorial cartoonist expects to get recycled rehashed crap. And if you’re going to send out recycled rehashed self-plagiarized crap, the least that you can do is label it as such.

Those of us who oppose plagiarism and hackwork aren’t even being allowed to comment in response to these sleazy articles. I tried to post the comment below, and was repeatedly blocked – either by a name block recognition program or because the comment section had simply been disabled by E&P:

Of the many lame excuses that have been given to justify cartoonist Bill Day’s brazen acts of plagiarism, recycling, and self-plagiarism – no, there is absolutely nothing unclear about any of this, not if you’re honest and/or willing to pay attention – this one is one of the more nauseating: “…in a perfect world, editorial cartoonists would produce original and excellent new cartoons on a daily basis. But clearly, with cutbacks and layoffs adversely affecting the ranks of political cartoonists, such a perfect world doesn’t exist.”

The recession that has devastated the American economy and impacted journalism and print media exceptionally hard is no excuse to cut corners on basic journalistic ethics and integrity. If you don’t have the time or energy to produce high-quality original work, auction off your drafting table on eBay and go away.

Bill Day is a newcomer to the world that I and many other younger editorial cartoonists – I use the term loosely, since I will turn 50 later this year – been living in for decades. Bill Day has held numerous staff jobs, neither I nor any of the young generation of cartoonists ever have or likely ever will. He has won prizes that no member of the young generation ever has. In other words, he has had every advantage, yet he has squandered the accidental benefits of demographics – to be a baby boomer was to be able to walk into almost any newspaper and score a job – and wallowed in a cesspool of repeated ethical lapses.

I am broke. I don’t have a staff job. Never have. I might lose my house. But you won’t catch me plagiarizing, repurposing or self-plagiarizing my work. I do the best that I can with the talent that I have and let the chips fall where they may, as do many other hard-working impoverished cartoonists. We don’t ask for much, but it is disgusting to watch excuses be made for and prizes awarded to people who betray the basic standards that are universally accepted within our craft.

 

Even though it feels a lot like spitting in the wind to try to save a profession that doesn’t really seem to want to save itself, I will continue to do so because I love editorial cartooning and American journalism and I know that there are readers and cartoonists and others who care. This stuff matters.