Walking the Line: Satire, Censorship and the New Culture-War Referees
The Australian Press Council’s ruling against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald over a Cathy Wilcox cartoon called “Grass roots” should not be dismissed as another skirmish in the endless outrage wars. Nor should it be lazily waved away as “cancel culture”.
The cartoon, published on 7 January 2026. was found to have breached the Council’s Standards of Practice because its imagery encoded an antisemitic trope: the suggestion that Jewish or Israeli power secretly manipulates political events, media narratives or public campaigns. We have chosen not to show the cartoon, but it is still on the cartoonist’s Bluesky.
1EarthMedia is a member of the Press Council through our membership of LINA and we can see why the Council ruled as it did. Antisemitism is real. Racism is real. Religious prejudice is real. Editorial cartoonists, columnists, artists and academics cannot pretend that old hatreds become harmless simply because they have been redrawn with fresh ink.
But the ruling also lands in a much wider and more dangerous cultural moment. Across Australia, the public square is getting smaller. Writers’ festivals have been shaken by withdrawals, cancellations and codes of conduct. Speakers have been dumped. Academics have complained of being chilled, warned off, or made to tiptoe around Israel, Gaza, Zionism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and Palestinian rights as if every sentence is wired to an alarm.
The result is not healthy debate. It is nervous speech. And nervous speech is bad for journalism, bad for universities, bad for the arts, and fatal to public understanding.
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Cathy Wilcox, cartoonist
Cathy Wilcox is the current president of the Australian Cartoonists Association and one of Australia’s most decorated editorial cartoonists, with her work appearing for decades in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Cathy is a four time Walkley Award winner, along with Stanley, Kennedy and Museum of Australian Democracy Political Cartoonist of the Year honours.
The cartoon crossed a line — but where is the line?
Ms. Wilcox’s cartoon’s intended target appeared to be the political campaign for a Royal Commission. It depicted a supposed grassroots movement being carried along by political and public figures, while a figure resembling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu beat a drum nearby.
The intended point may have been about astroturfing: the manufacture of public pressure by powerful interests. That is a legitimate subject for satire. Political movements should be scrutinised. Lobbying should be scrutinised. Public grief should not be turned into a no-go zone for journalists.
But the Press Council found that this particular visual metaphor carried a poisonous implication: that the push for a Royal Commission was being orchestrated by Netanyahu, a Jewish Israeli leader, and that Australian figures were marching to his beat.
That is where the cartoon stumbled from political criticism into something much older and uglier. The image risked reviving the conspiracy-laden idea of hidden Jewish control — of politics, media, governments and public movements.
The Council was right to take that seriously. Yet the harder question remains: how do editors, cartoonists and writers criticise power without being accused of bigotry by those who benefit from power? That question is now central to the culture wars.
The rise of the self-appointed referee
One of the defining features of modern public debate is the rise of organisations and lobbyists who claim not merely to participate in argument, but to police its boundaries.
Some do this from the right. Some from the left. Some from religious communities. Some from activist networks. Some from industry. Some from foreign-policy pressure groups. All arrive with the same whistle around the neck.
They do not simply say: “We disagree.” … They say: “This must not be said.”
They do not simply argue: “That is offensive.” … They argue: “That is unsafe.”
And once a word like “unsafe” enters the room, institutions panic. Festivals flinch. Universities issue statements. Publishers call emergency meetings. Sponsors quietly ask whether the whole thing is worth the trouble. The modern cancellation does not always arrive with a censor’s stamp. Sometimes it arrives as a risk assessment.
The venue gets nervous. The board gets nervous. The donor gets nervous. The vice-chancellor gets nervous. The insurance people are summoned from whatever fluorescent-lit bunker they inhabit. Soon the talk is postponed, the session is reframed, the speaker is “mutually unavailable”, and everyone pretends the furniture moved itself.
This is how censorship works in polite society. No one bans the book. They simply make the launch impossible.
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Criticism is not hatred
The problem is especially acute around Israel and Gaza, where language is now patrolled with forensic aggression.
Criticism of Hamas is not Islamophobia.
Criticism of the Israeli government is not antisemitism.
Criticism of Zionism is not automatically antisemitism.
Criticism of Palestinian political movements is not automatically racism.
But each of these statements requires care, context and intellectual honesty. The difficulty is that public debate now rewards the opposite: speed, denunciation, tribal loyalty and screenshots stripped of meaning.
There is a line between criticising a government and vilifying a people.
There is a line between criticising a lobby group and invoking a conspiracy theory.
There is a line between condemning a war and blaming Jewish Australians for the actions of Israel.
There is a line between defending Jewish communities from antisemitism and using antisemitism as a shield against all criticism of Israeli state power.
That line must be defended from both directions.
If antisemitism is minimised, Jewish Australians are left exposed.
If antisemitism is weaponised to silence all criticism, public debate is corrupted.
Both things can be true. In fact, both things are true. That is precisely why this issue is so difficult — and why slogans are such poor substitutes for thought.
The wider problem
Australia’s literary and academic worlds have already felt the chill. At Bendigo Writers Festival, more than 50 writers and moderators withdrew after concerns were raised about a code of conduct and its effect on discussion of the war in Gaza. The opening night gala was cancelled. In Adelaide, controversy over the removal of Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah triggered a wave of withdrawals and a wider crisis for Writers’ Week.
These are not small matters. Writers’ festivals are supposed to be places where difficult subjects are aired, not quietly smothered under the soft pillow of “community safety”. The point of a writers’ festival – and political cartoons – is not that everyone leaves comfortable.
The point is that people encounter ideas — sometimes bracing, sometimes confronting, sometimes wrong, sometimes brilliant, sometimes infuriating. That is why the tickets are cheaper than therapy and more useful than a religious sermon.
Universities face the same challenge. Academic freedom cannot mean freedom only for approved opinions. It cannot mean freedom only until a donor, lobby group or minister complains. If scholars cannot analyse war, nationalism, colonialism, religion, race, law and power, then the university has become a branding exercise with sandstone.
Of course institutions must protect students and audiences from harassment and vilification. But protection from hatred is not the same as protection from discomfort. A democracy that cannot tell the difference is already in trouble.
The Press Council ruling does not say Netanyahu is beyond criticism or that political cartoons must be polite. It does not say lobbying around a Royal Commission is beyond scrutiny. It says publications must take reasonable steps to avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice.
That is not censorship. That is editorial responsibility. The trouble is that we now live in a culture where every pressure group wants to convert its preferred interpretation into the official ruling before publication. They want to be critic, complainant, prosecutor, judge and executioner — preferably before breakfast. Editors must resist that. But they must also do their jobs.
The editor’s dilemma is not whether to offend — journalism and satire must sometimes offend — but whether the target is clear, the argument is sound, and the work avoids lazy imagery that drags old prejudice back onto the page.
Free speech does not mean consequence-free speech, and editorial responsibility does not mean surrendering the pen to lobbyists, donors or self-appointed referees. The hard task is to criticise power precisely: name the government, the lobby group, the media empire, the political opportunist or the public figure being scrutinised, then make the case without smearing a whole people or faith.
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The line, the whistle and the nervous room
Cathy Wilcox’s “Grass roots” cartoon stepped into the culture war minefield. It had every right to question the politics behind calls for a Royal Commission; provocation is not a defect in a cartoon, it is the engine. A political cartoon that offends no one is usually just an illustration in sensible shoes.
But in today’s culture-war minefield, offence is often no longer the end of an argument. It is the beginning of a campaign. A lobbyist, advocate or aggrieved reader can seize on an image, frame it through the most damaging possible lens, and dare institutions to defend it.
That does not mean every complaint is cynical. Some expose real harm, prejudice or editorial blind spots. But every complaint now arrives in a climate of pressure, fear and institutional self-protection.
The Press Council did not discover a sacred boundary marked clearly for all time. It accepted that a line had been crossed. That line between criticism and prejudice is real — but it is also contested, political and increasingly patrolled by those who claim the referee’s whistle.
The lesson is not that cartoonists, writers or editors should avoid Israel, Gaza, Zionism, antisemitism, lobbying or political influence. That would be surrender. The lesson is to criticise with precision: name the politician, the government, the lobby group, the media empire, the hypocrisy — then make the case.
A free society cannot be forced to choose between reckless provocation and obedient silence. It needs editors with courage, critics with precision, cartoonists with teeth, and institutions able to tell the difference between dangerous prejudice and a dangerous idea.
When asked “Hi Cathy, do you have a comment about the APC ruling for this story?” she replied “Yes. Who drew the cartoon for your article?”
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