After a shaft of light of sunshine , it ’s back to bare sky in the world of editorial animated cartoon . Just days after Mark Fiore ’s app NewsToons was finally approved — after amedia frenzyover the Pulitzer Prize - succeed cartoonist ’s November rejection — the App Store ’s reviewer are at it yet again . Daryl Cagle , an editorial cartoonist who run thePolitical Cartoonists Index on MSNBC , revealed in a web log post on Saturday that his latest software , a collection of Tiger Woods caricature , had been of late rejected by Apple .
Cagle ’s company , Cagle Cartoons , ran into similar problem last year when prove to get its veryfirst editorial sketch applicationinto the App Store . It charter more than three calendar month — and bad mechanical press over the initial rejection of a imitation app holler Bobble Rep — before commentator finally approved the program . Since then , Cagle Cartoons , which roll up and packages the work of prominent editorial cartoonist , has been able to release24 additional appsfor the iPhone . But plainly , App Store reviewers have taken offensive to what would have been program identification number 26 .
In a web log post entitled“you could Ridicule Obama , but Do n’t Bash Tiger Woods,”Cagle write :
As the interview for news program and opinion has grown on the iPhone , we ’ve put more feat into developing editorial animated cartoon apps that show all the latest animated cartoon that the cartoonist draw on different topics … Apple approved our “ msnbc.com Obama Cartoons ” app that show the latest newspaper editorial cartoons describe about President Obama , but Apple decline our app on the issue of Tiger Woods . It seems that Tiger crosses an editorial credit line at Apple .
After fellow cartoonist Mark Fiore ’s app was O.K. last week , Cagle wrote to Apple , ask them to reconsider the Tiger Woods app , but received no response .
“ I suppose Tiger Woods could be considered an insignificant subject for debate , ” write Cagle , “ but newspaper editor program for certain devoted a lot of place to Tiger ; we heard about Tiger endlessly on television ; columnist wrote about Tiger ; editorial cartoonists absorb hundreds of sketch about Tiger – [ but ] Apple decided that Tiger Woods was not an appropriate topic of treatment for editorial cartoonist . ”
The big, illustrated picture
The section of the iPhone Developer License Agreement referenced , 3.3.17 , details “ subject matter or material of any form ( text , graphics , image , picture , sounds , etc ) that in Apple ’s fair judgement may be found objectionable . ” As Cagle points out , mess of opinion piecesfrom reputable and non - reputable sources have been written about Tiger Woods — not to mention other public figures — over the past twelvemonth . As such , it ’s not unlikely that some of them have been read through an iPhone or iPad app .
So , if the content is the same , why does Apple point toon and not op - eds ? According to the developer ’s agreement , it has every rightfulness to go after a magazine clause that could be take “ defamatory”—just as it does for a cartoon . In fact , if Apple does in fact consider it has the tariff to protect the image of public figures , I ’m surprise there are any newspapers with editorial content allowed in the App Store at all . Then again , if Apple announced tomorrow thatThe New York Timeswould no longer be allowed in the App Store because of “ editorial subject that ridicules public figure , ” the world would be up in arms , because the world knowsThe New York Times .
I do believe that the App Store ’s insurance policy will eventually feed - correct . There are enough citizenry fighting against editorial security review — including , if reports of e - mails are to be believed , Steve Jobs himself — to finally change the tides and remove the piddle . The only question is how long it will take — and how many more rejection stories we ’ll have to pop into our MadLibs template — before this is resolved .
