Tony Doris said he never shied away from controversy during his lengthy career at The Palm Beach Post, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in the backyard of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Mr. Doris, 67, investigated local government, digging into city affairs in West Palm Beach, Fla., over two decades at the paper, most recently as editorial page editor. He didn’t expect his career there to end over a cartoon.
Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the United States and the owner of The Palm Beach Post, fired Mr. Doris last month after he decided to publish a cartoon about the war in Gaza, Mr. Doris said. The cartoon set off a backlash in Palm Beach, including a rebuke from a local Jewish group that claimed the cartoon was antisemitic, resulting in a quick response from Gannett’s senior editors.
Mr. Doris said in an interview last week that the cartoon was antiwar, not antisemitic, adding that he thought Gannett’s senior editors lacked the fortitude to stand up for their journalists.
“They’re afraid of their shadow,” Mr. Doris said, adding, “I think it speaks to a misunderstanding or failure to engage with the mission of an editorial page.”
In a statement, Gannett said that the cartoon “did not meet our standards,” adding that it “would not have been published if the proper protocols were followed.” The company did not say what those protocols were or comment on Mr. Doris’s termination, citing confidentiality.
“We sincerely regret the error and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again,” said Lark-Marie Antón, a spokeswoman for The Palm Beach Post.
In late January, Mr. Doris — who said he was a Jewish supporter of Israel — selected the cartoon to run in a print issue of The Palm Beach Post. The image shows two Israeli soldiers rescuing a hostage captured by Hamas. Under the words “Some Israeli hostages are home after over a year of merciless war,” one of the soldiers says, “Watch your step” as he, the rescued hostage and the other soldier walk through a mass of bodies with the label “over 40,000 Palestinians killed.”
Mr. Doris said he expected the image, drawn by a syndicated cartoonist, to cause a minor stir in Palm Beach, which has a vocal Jewish community. But he wasn’t prepared for what came next. After the cartoon ran, the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County bought a full-page ad in the following week’s Sunday newspaper condemning the cartoon.
After the ad ran, senior editors at Gannett intervened. Mr. Doris said he was suspended within days, and editors at the company met with a group that included Michael Hoffman, the president and chief executive of the federation. Mr. Hoffman said in an interview that the editors from Gannett apologized during the meeting and discussed how the attendees could promote healthy dialogue about issues important to the local Jewish community.
Mr. Doris said he was fired the week after the meeting by a senior editor at Gannett who told him that he violated company policies. Mr. Doris said that the editor did not specify what those policies were and added that he was not paid any severance.
In an interview, Mr. Hoffman said that he believed the cartoon was antisemitic, partly because it trivialized the plight of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and gave more fuel to online hatred of Jewish people.
“Since Oct. 7, the dramatic rise in antisemitism has been the result of how the conflict in Gaza and in Israel has been reported,” Mr. Hoffman said. “We believe that there has not been a fair and balanced approach toward how the war has been reported.”
The cartoonist who drew the image, Jeff Danziger, has drawn many cartoons critical of the war. In an interview on Saturday, he rejected the idea that the cartoon was antisemitic, saying it was “simply a case of, ‘this war’s gone on long enough.’” Mr. Danziger, an Army veteran whose father is Jewish, also said that his service as an intelligence officer has made him critical of war.
“I’m a Vietnam veteran, and I think that I know what I’m talking about — at least from the standpoint of war being bad,” Mr. Danziger said.
Mr. Doris said in the interview that he did not regret selecting the cartoon that he believes ultimately led to his dismissal. It’s fair to “have the conversation about the horrors of war,” he said, adding that the job of a newspaper opinion page is to raise important issues for their communities.
“I remain convinced that, as corny as it sounds, democracy needs journalists who care about the mission and not just about page views,” Mr. Doris said.
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