ROXBORO, N.C. (AP) - The editor and publisher of a North Carolina newspaper has resigned after running a syndicated cartoon that has been criticized as racist.
The Courier-Times in Roxboro said Tuesday that editor Johnny Whitefield’s resignation is effective immediately and that the cartoon which ran June 11 “does not reflect the views of the Courier-Times.”
The cartoon depicts a masked black man grabbing a white woman’s purse. She asks for someone to call 911 but the man says, “Good luck with that lady … we defunded the police.”
The same cartoon also prompted resignations at the Washington Missourian, a family-owned newspaper in Missouri.
A day before his resignation, Whitefield apologized for running the cartoon.
“I should have seen beyond the printed words in the editorial cartoon and considered the racial message that cartoon sent. I did not and I am sorry,” he wrote.
The cartoonist, Tom Stiglich, told a St. Louis television station that the cartoon “was based solely on violent crime numbers here in the US. To ignore that would be doing a disservice to the reader.”
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