Rupert Murdoch Apologizes For Cartoon: "The Buck Stops With Me"

Rupert Murdoch released a statement in the pages of the NY Post on Tuesday, saying in part, "I am ultimately responsible."

Murdoch was responding to the uproar after last week's controversial stimulus cartoon, for which the paper had already semi-apologized.

The statement in full:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

Comments

[MBFLA]

WOW, that is almost a real apology. Three or four more and Murdoch may actually be able to give one that sounds somewhat sincere.

[NewstoMe2]

Did Mur only apologize because people were calling for DHS, the FBI and NYPD to investigate this barely veiled threat to President Obama's life? Did it become clear to him that he was in for some serious problems if he and his "media corp." didn't get their act together and remove their support of this disgusting imagery, and THAT is the true reason for his half-a@#ed "apology"? I'm sooo unimpressed with it! I want to see him DO something substantial to PROVE that he GETS why this "cartoon" was NOT at all funny. He wants us to believe that he cares about someone's feelings about it? Come on! He is not a dumb man; he knows exactly why that cartoon should never have been printed. He just doesn't care how he portrays blacks, and he thought nothing of it. He never thought the protest would get this big. But will it happen again? You betcha it will!!

[Noland]

Beautiful! Apology accepted, can we move on now?

[NewstoMe2]

No, we can't move on until we are shown a sincere effort on the part of Mr. Mur to change his ways. No insincere apology is acceptable to a thinking adult.

[Onlyoucan]

TO Nolan: You can't accept the apology for the PRESIDENT! You can move on now!

[publicenemy2009]

This is to all those who said that the incident was much ado about nothing. I have some salt to go with your crow.

But this part still bothers me "It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was INTERPETED by many as such."

[neoprimordial]

One could make the argument that since the chimp story was current, you could try to work the notion into the cartoon that the stimulus package was so ineptly presented (or put together) that a chimp must have done it, but as soon as you do that, it also becomes crystal clear that saying so would suggest a) a particularly low racial slur against the president, and b) subtly advocating violence against the president. As a result, the editors in charge at the N.Y. Post should not have released it for publication. They did anyway, and now it's time for heads to roll.

I appreciate that Murdoch, such as he is, went out of his way to publicly apologize for the cartoon, but it's not enough. The persons responsible for releasing the cartoon need to be released from their jobs at the Post.

Lastly, it's not about the hurt the cartoon caused. It's about the offensive and appalling advocating of racism and violence that the cartoon depicts. They didn't know? They should have known. That's what Rupert is supposedly paying them for.

[Owltree]

Absolutely spot on!

[CherokeeGirl]

They can pretend all they want that it wasn't racial, but Col hates Obama and so does the cartoonist, so consider the source, Murdoch, before you assume or just say it wasn't intended to be racist. Was Col fired? He should have been!

[hiriumi]

Even if the cartoonist didn't intend any racism, I think it was insensitive in a sense that America has a sad history that abused and discriminated against black people. Living in this country, there is no excuse you don't know about the history especially when you are more casted in public eyes.

[pwiecek]

Is he going to do anything concrete about it?

[beenjammin]

At 64 years of age, I've walked this Earth long enough to assess that 75% of the American people
would agree that this cartoon was, if not overstepping the boundaries of racial inference, was certainly on the border of implying so. Give or take 20% of the above estimation.
Mr. Murdoch may not be aware of the bigger picture outside his sphere, of his social world.
Mr. Murdoch may want to initiate a survey, to find out how many people are aware, that people of color have, for 400 years, been compared to simians. It's common knowledge. Let's not be cowards and work on owning up.
You're too smart Mr. Murdoch - to use the old, worn phrase: "well I'm sorry you took it the wrong way". Get modern, make more money with understanding.

[CherokeeGirl]

yeah man! :) He needs to break up his news corp and dismantle the current fox news.

[GoogleMaster]

Now if he could just pull the plug on his FOX network he'd make at least half the folks on the planet happy. The other half, however, might be forced to start thinking for themselves. Tough call Mr Mur but as Spike Lee would say, we know you'll "Do the Right Thing".

[lilron]

If this were any other animal that'd been shot, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The sad reality is that it was a chimp, and the connotation of that, when we have a black President, inflame racial tensions. When I first saw the comic, I noted immediately the satire of it. I also knew that it would be taken exactly how it's been taken. I keep questioning, is it really that big of a deal? And I question this as a black woman who to this day has people tell me that I am where I am because of my race, and no white person would ever be in this position (mind you, I'm just a lawyer, but clearly my gpa and LSAT score were too low for me to qualify based on anything other than my race), so I'm fairly attuned to some of the slurs and stereotypes. But really? Do we think the President cares? I think he's got better things to think about.

[Owltree]

Perhaps the President doesn't really care about this. He does indeed have more pressing issues to think about. However, I care. And I am embarrassed and angry. Being white, southern born and bred and at 68 years of age having grown up in the south during segregation, Jim Crow and all the other atrocities imposed upon African-Americans, you bet I care. Enough is enough. It needs to stop. It needs to stop now. To claim ignorance of what went on before is no excuse for anyone. Mr. Murdoch should prove that his heart is in the right place. This "semi-apology" is not acceptable.

[CameronTurner]

Mr. Murdoch and the New York Post editors actually peddling the impossible­-to-believ­e notion that they didn't see the racial implications of Sean Delonas' cartoon before it was published. What's next - ads for the Brooklyn Bridge in the Post's real estate section? There is no way that news professionals working in the United States today, who witnessed the racist attacks on Barack Obama during the campaign (including those Curious George t-shirts) could have looked at that cartoon and not known rigth away that it would be seen as a racist, violence-suggesting attack on our first African-American President.

So I don't believe Mr. Murdoch. His apology, along with the two previous, indidgnant statements from The Post will come in handy the next time I am fertilizing the lawn.

As my mother used to say before whupping my behind for doing something I knew was wrong, “If you were sorry you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

Cameron Turner, "Turner's Two Cents" www.urbanthoughtcollective.com

[AngelaQuattrano]

I see it as a situation where the apologies are improving in sincerity, not that they are yet good enough.

[trish74]

Finally

[retromega]

This apology rings as true as the copper dimes we use. Although you were wrong to misinterpret our witty cartoon, we apologize if you could not comprehend how satiric our portrait of the assainated ape author really is. If you don't understand this I am sorry because THE BUCK STOPS WITH ME.

I'm amazed a business "man" could know so little about his world and himself. Yeah, if I say the buck stops here like I think real men do then the world will think I'm a real man too! Just like 'W'!

These "apologies" remind me of an episode in 1967 in Duluth MN where the head of a local draft board opened a speech to highschool students with a RASTUS joke, complete with the 'eyes do declares" and "sho'nuffs" and all the rest. When asked by a student if he thought it was appropriate to indulge in such obvious racial stereotyping as a government representative this gentleman seemed dumbfounded and actually said "but they're all named Rastus". Yeah, right!!

But only in Rupert's world. And he wants more special treatment by our country for this? Mr Murdoch wants to spread this filth around our country so he can put more money in his pocket and run that back to his dream castle?

I say no more tax money for this sorry excuse! Not one more waiver! Not one more red cent! No more obsenity from Rupert and his mouthpieces!

[Wallace2]

I hope more and more of the public see how, blurring the lines of what is satire and what is just plain inflamatory, negative and unproductive keeps us stuck in retro humanity. I join the outraged leaders who are taking this opportunity to out this newspaper and its Rupert Murdoch for his duplicity and continued misinformation and abuse of the news media. I personally support the loss of his license for ownership of two media outlets in the same venue.

[slj316]

Does anyone actually believe that Rupert is being sincere with his apology? If he had fired the cartoonist who drew it and the editor that allowed the cartoon to be printed in the first place, then I might have believed that Murdoch was being sincere. I guess once the firestorm dies down, it'll be business as usual at the NYP. Basically it was a non-apology apology. He was saying if your panties got in a bunch because we implied that the POTUS was a chimp who deserved to get shot because of the stimulus plan, then we're sorry. Otherwise, we're not. And for the life of me I don't see how anyone could come away from looking at that cartoon with anything other than they were equating President Obama to a chimp (which has racist overtones which have been explained) that needs to be shot because the stimulus plan was his baby (I know that Congress wrote the bill, but it was Pres. Obama's brainchild and he was and is the face of the bill, so there's no way on God's green earth that the cartoonist could even come out and say that the chimp represented Congress and think that people with an IQ over room temperature would believe him.).

[DelvinMcGee]

Welcome to the United States of the Offended

[NewstoMe2]

The "cartoon" was offensive, that is why it was created, to offend. So I was not offended until I saw this "cartoon". A NYP "cartoon" that is a thinly-veiled threat is not funny, and I think that Mr. Murdoch's lived in the US long enough to know what is just over the top stupid, wrong, and racist, despite his jive apology. An apology would have been stated as an apology for doing something offensive, not words that blame the reader for their feelings about an obviously racist and despiccable "cartoon". Obviously you don't get that, so you don't care. Keep on reading the NYP; perhaps one day you'll see a stereotype of yourself, and you,too, can be offended. But then again, no-it takes some intelligence to be offended in the first place.

[billsmile]

Rupert said, "...the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation."

The way to mock legislation is by killing its author? Nice try Rupert.

As bad as, if not worse than, the racist theme was the suggestion that President Obama be killed for writing the legislation.

[stondem]

Obama did not wright the legislation. Congress did?