Charles Apple

Editor & Publisher reports today that readers of at least two U.S. newspapers were offended at a sequence in the Funky Winkerbean comic strip that showed a character being blown up by a hidden bomb in Iraq.

First, the sequence. Three strips, which ran Thursday though Saturday:

Editor & Publisher reports:

In a Saturday note to readers, Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer Executive Editor Ben Holden wrote: “… the … strip at issue had no contextual labeling and should never have run in our paper. For the failure to identify the problem and spike the material, I take full responsibility and apologize to the men and women of our Armed Forces. We have internally implemented review steps to more closely monitor syndicated material. Also, I have spoken directly with our liaison at King Features and with Mr. Batiuk. I have mandated that we get a ‘heads up’ when such sensitive material is being transmitted, or, I told the liaison, we will cancel part or all of our business relationship with King.”

…The Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner also reportedly received a call from an upset parent.

It should be noted that Columbus is near Fort Benning, from where many of the troops now in Iraq originate.

Read the E&P story here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003550444

Find King Features’ home page for Funky Winkerbean here:
http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/fwinker/about.htm

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Comic strips, Charles Apple, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.