“A certain fear weighs on cartoonists as well as newspaper editors”

Ten years after the attack against Charlie Hebdoon January 7, 2015, and almost five years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, on October 16, 2020, the press cartoon, and in particular the caricature – this specific satirical visual genre derides its target by representing it in a grotesque way – finds itself in a paradoxical situation. Indeed, it has perhaps never attracted so much attention – from public authorities, the media, citizens, who have made it a symbol of freedom of expression and free criticism of all powers. . However, the number of press cartoonists continues to decline throughout the world, as does the space given to their productions in the media.

Certainly, this situation is largely due to the hostility of authoritarian regimes, who willingly use the scissors of censorship and the tools of repression against all artists and journalists critical of power. But the same downward trend is observed in Western democracies, where news cartoons continue to provoke knee-jerk reactions, particularly online.

In 2019, the announcement by the New York Timesafter the controversy triggered by a caricature representing Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog on a leash by Donald Trump, to no longer publish satirical drawings in its international edition – the national edition had already given up on it years earlier – had thus moved the profession , who saw it as a tangible sign of the medium's loss of speed, or even its downgrading.

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