Buffalo editorial cartoonist receives death threats
Home run derby competition provides a connection to Glens Falls from 35 years ago
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The Buffalo History Museum thought enough of Buffalo News editorial cartoonist, Adam Zyglis, it exhibited his work this past spring.
Like so many parts of daily newspapers, having an editorial cartoonist is a luxury very few newspapers can afford. But that work, when done at its highest level can be as powerful as anything in the newspaper.
Even more so in these polarized times.
My recollection was that I used to get more feedback on our editorial cartoon - on a national subject - than I did on our editorials on local issues. An editorial cartoon can convey its message in seconds while an editorial takes a little bit more work on the part of the reader.
This past week, Zyglis produced a cartoon about the Texas floods that showed a figure with a MAGA hat drowning under the rising flood waters while holding a "Help" sign and saying, "Gov't is the problem not the solution."
Many Republicans and Trump supporters thought the cartoon was mocking victims.
That's the thing about editorial cartoons, they often have different meanings to different meanings and when a news event involves a tragedy, it can be misinterpreted.
For the record, I don't think that Zyglis was mocking victims. What made this particular cartoon so powerful and so controversial was that it exposed the painful truth; the victims in central Texas were betrayed by the very people they expected to save them.
What followed was to death threats to Zyglis, his wife and children.
Part of the Buffalo History Museum exhibit includes a display of hate mail that Zyglis has received over the years.
"Pretty vile stuff from assorted wing-nuts, although nothing that compares to what came out of the woodwork last week," wrote Jim Heaney, a former Buffalo News reporter, who wrote about the threats.
"Michael Kracker, chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee, kicked things off with a tweet that characterized the cartoon as `filth …twisted, vile, and shameful (and) mocking Texas families who lost loved ones in a tragedy, just because they might’ve voted Republican,” Heaney wrote. "One respondent to Kracker’s tweet, whose profile describes him as `MAGA. Conservative, committed to removing RINOs and leftists' said of Zyglis: `We can only hope he and his family go through similar tragedies.'"
I understand how that might be the first reaction, but with further evaluation, Zyglis was simple being a truth-teller.
For those of us who write editorials and commentary it is an inevitable part of the job. More than once, a reporter sent me an email they received for the "death threat" file. They did not want me to do anything about it, they just wanted it on the record if someone actually acted.
On rare occasions, we forwarded the threat to the police who sometimes paid the author a visit.
Closer to New York, Heaney reported that state Sen. Rob Ortt, the minority leader in the New York State Legislature who represents Niagara County, wrote this on Twitter:
“If there were any lingering doubts as to the character or the bias of the people who run the carcass of a newspaper known as @thebuffalonews or @adamzyglis – there can be none now.”
For years, I have assured readers that the opinions of our journalists were not fueled by preconceived political ideologies of the newspaper. Columnists and editorial cartoonists publish their own opinions on current events.
What happened in Texas appears to be a betrayal to those who voted for the current president.
In 2009, I judged the editorial cartoon entries for the Pulitzer Prize and over four days got a first-hand education of their power.
While I don't remember Zyglis' work specifically that year, he did go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 2015.
As an editor of a community newspaper, I was reminded over and over again about the power of photographs and editorial cartoons.
Visual images have a power like no other.
For a time, we used free lance cartoonists to comment on local issues. Their their work often provoked our readers into passionate complaints.
Margaret Sullivan, the former Buffalo News editor who hired Zyglis and writes a column for The Guardian now, wrote that the threats to Zyglis were so vicious that the FBI and local police were alerted and he hired private security.
A Buffalo Newspaper Guild event at the Buffalo History Museum, intended to support local journalism, was canceled last Thursday because organizers worried the event would be disrupted.
The Buffalo Newspaper Guild issued the following statement:
"We wholly condemn the individuals who have chosen to twist a positive, public event into an attempt to terrorize and silence Zyglis. Zyglis is an opinion cartoonist who puts his name to every cartoon he draws. While his work is separate and independent from the work of newsroom reporters and editors at The Buffalo News, the Buffalo Newspaper Guild will not stand for physical threats of harm against him and his family."
Sullivan pointed out there is another problem at play here - media illiteracy.
"It’s the pervasive lack of knowledge about what a political cartoon is supposed to be, and what it’s supposed to do — provoke thought and, yes, even disagreement," Sullivan wrote. "Instead of understanding that, many people leap to the faulty conclusion that since the editorial commentary comes in the form of a cartoon, it must be making a joke at someone’s expense."
Sullivan also put a human face on Zyglis, something that is often overlooked when discussing the work of journalists. She hired him at The Buffalo News right out of Canisius College.
"I know him to be thoughtful, humane and intelligent, as well as a devoted husband and father," Sullivan wrote. "He’s also open to all kinds of views, and he keeps in touch with plenty of people who don’t share his progressive stance."
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy and threats of violence against journalists are an attack on all of us,” said Congressman Tim Kennedy, a Buffalo Democrat. He added that Zyglis “uses his art to challenge, question and inspire.”
What is so powerful about the work of editorial cartoonists is their ability to cut to the heart of an issue with one glance from a reader.
I think they should give the guy another Pulitzer.
Glens Falls connection
It was my first state basketball tournament after taking over as sports editor of The Post-Star. One of the teams participating in 1989 was from the far eastern end of Long Island - East Hampton.
The star of that team was Kenny Wood. He scored 2,613 points in his career and was named Mr. Basketball in New York in 1989. He went on to four-year career at the Univeristy of Richmond where he averaged 12.1 points per game.
So as I was watching Washington Nationals' player James Wood participate in the Home Run Derby Monday night, an announcer mentioned his father, Kenny Wood, was a standout basketball player at the University of Richmond.
Small world.
The younger Wood is just 22 and is having a stellar second season with the Nationals where he is hitting .278 with 24 home runs and 69 RBI. While he hit 16 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby, he did not advance.
More weather cuts
The New York Times followed provided in-depth reporting on the state of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - which oversees the National Weather Service - and the dangers that recent cuts will have on all of us.
It found the Trump budget will close 10 laboratories that research the way a warming planet is changing weather. Among the labs closing is one in Miami that sends teams of "hurricane hunters" to fly into storms to collecti critical data.
Major cuts are also coming to a program that "uses river gauges to predict floods."
And that doesn't even get into the $3.6 billion the administration has
cut in FEMA grants.
“The Trump administration is leaving communities naked, without the necessary tools that could help them assess risks or reduce those risks,” Alice C. Hill, who worked on climate resilience and security issues during the Obama administration, told the Times.
“We know preparedness saves lives," Hill said. “When you make cuts to the Weather Service, that is undermining forecasts. When you cut the collection of data, satellites, all of that will degrade the accuracy of forecasts. And even with a strong forecast, it’s meaningless unless the people who need to hear it, hear it.”
Another $2 billion in funding is expected to be cut from NOAA next year.
Some forecast offices are no longer staff overnight and fewer weather balloons are being launches.
"On the chopping block would be the agency’s entire scientific research division, one of the world’s premier weather and climate research centers," the Times wrote. "preventing the creation of new weather forecasting technologies."
The administration is also planning on terminating satellites collecting data on the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice for more than two decades. These cuts could bring about a “train wreck” for weather forecasting, said William B. Gail, a former president of the American Meteorological Society.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
And these are very limited people in this administration.
I often ask to what end do they destroy something that has taken the work of so many, so long to build? What purpose is served by ending these programs? By not knowing what is coming, are we rally part of the problem? I strain at my ability to come up with an answer as to who is the master served by this criminal neglect of public trust. And it is for the pathetic reason I've come to believe is the closest I'm gonna get: They do it to piss us off, to "own" the libs. That's it. If it wasn't so dangerous and hateful, it would be laughable. The more I think of this the less sense it makes but why else deny climate science? And to convince one half of our elected congress to go along? With the obvious result on display, the denial deepens and it becomes and end unto itself, tough to get through to, and if Texas doesn't do it, for the life of me I can't imagine what would.