Co-owners of the Washington Missourian in Franklin County, Mo., resigned in protest Wednesday over the newspaper’s decision to publish a syndicated cartoon that satirizes the defunding of police departments.
“We believe it was racist and in no circumstance should have been published,” Susan Miller Warden and Jeanne Miller Wood
wrote about the cartoon in a message to readers. “We apologize to our readers and our staff for the obvious pain and offense it caused.”
That choice to publish was made by their father.
In the cartoon, by Tom Stiglich of Creators Syndicate, a light-skinned woman screams, “Help!! Somebody call 911!” A darker-skinned man who is attempting to snatch her purse says: “Good luck with that, lady. … We defunded the police,” a reference to
a proposal that some activists have put forward to reform law enforcement.
Bill Miller Sr., the paper’s editor and publisher, put the cartoon in the paper “without our knowledge,” the co-owners wrote. “We saw the cartoon at the same time as our readers and were just as outraged and horrified as our staff and community.
“Had we known we would have vehemently fought against publishing it,” they continued. “We believe this is the reason we were kept in the dark about its publication.”
Miller Sr.
apologized for the cartoon Wednesday afternoon on the newspaper’s site, calling it “racially insensitive” and saying that his decision to publish it showed “poor judgement on my part.”
