Voice Dissenting Views At Your Peril
It’s entirely rational for political dissidents, even here in the good ol’ USA with its First Amendment protections, to watch their backs, staying alert to threats to their physical and financial well-being. If you think this is all paranoia, ask Rick Friday, who had been giving farmers a voice and a laugh every Friday for two decades through his cartoons in Farm News, until he was fired last Friday.
Again, I fall hard in the best interest of large corporations. I am no longer the Editorial Cartoonist for Farm News due to the cartoon (shown above) 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 its Friday cartoons after 21 years of service and over 1,090 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 county.
The First Amendment protections obviously do not provide complete protection as evidenced by the above.
Another example occurred when tobacco was heavily advertised. Many publications depended on revenue from tobacco advertising and were afraid to carry information about the hazards of smoking lest they lose their advertising revenue. I’m sure that many other examples could be found.