Papers Pulling Controversial Doonesbury

A "Sunday-comics consortium" that provides the Sunday comics section to 38 papers is dropping Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" after a poll that reveled 21 of the papers didn't like it. No other polls have been held on any other comics, though.

According to Editor & Publisher:

"It was not a political statement of any kind," Continental Features President Van Wilkerson told E&P. "I personally don't have an opinion about 'Doonesbury' one way or another." Wilkerson said he conducted the survey because Garry Trudeau's comic "created more controversy than other strips."

One of the 15 papers, The Anniston (Ala.) Star, expressed public dismay with the vote yesterday -- saying the decision amounted to censorship. In an E&P interview after that article appeared, Star Executive Editor Troy Turner said: "Sure, 'Doonesbury' causes editors headaches from time to time, but there is a proven readership for it. Newspapers need to think of readers first, or they will continue to struggle." ... As previously reported, Star Publisher H. Brandt Ayers e-mailed Wilkerson to say he and his paper's editors "strongly object to an obviously political effort to silence a minority point of view. For years, my New Deal father bore the opposition views of Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks, and I believe he would have fought an effort to silence them a by a simple majority vote. This is wrong, offensive to First Amendment freedoms."

Trudeau is, naturally, unhappy about this:

“'Doonesbury' was singled out for internal polling because of the views of a single individual; other competing strips were not put to the same test. In this way, one opinion drove a process that eliminated the strip from 38 newspapers across the entire region, including 15 papers that wanted to keep it." ... The cartoonist concluded: "Some years ago, the armed services paper Stars and Stripes received some criticism for carrying 'Doonesbury.' Shortly thereafter, the paper dedicated an entire page to responses from military personnel, almost all in support of the strip. Even some who didn't care for 'Doonesbury' or its politics felt the strip should remain. More than most citizens, it seems, professional soldiers give a great deal of thought to what it is they're defending. A free press that welcomes dissenting views is one of those ideals."

It is true that Doonesbury can be overtly political, something that may not always be appropriate for a comics section. More than one paper puts it elsewhere, like the editorial page, for this reason — and that seems reasonable. The existence of an above-average number of complaints, though, doesn’t exclude the possibility of an above-average amount of support. I don’t see anyone dropping Johnny Hart’s B.C. for his overtly religious content. Isn’t that curious?

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