The New York Times has announced it will no longer include daily political cartoons in its international edition weeks after apologising for publishing a caricature, of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, deemed anti-Semitic.
The cartoon, published in April, depicted Netanyahu as a Star of David collar-wearing guide dog leading a kippah or Jewish skull cap-wearing blind Donald Trump.
It prompted an uproar within the Jewish community, with Israel's ambassador to the UN likening the drawing to the content of Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Sturmer.
Editor James Bennet said the paper had planned for a year to cease running political cartoons in the international print version of the Times, in line with the US edition.
The decision will come into effect on July 1, Bennet said in a statement on June 10.
Patrick Chappatte, one of the paper's leading cartoonists, said the decision was directly related to the Netanyahu cartoon.
While he condemned the publication of the caricature, he said he was concerned that media outlets were increasingly buckling under political pressure and criticism from “moralistic mobs” on social media .
“Over the last years, some of the very best cartoonists...lost their positions because their publishers found their work too critical of Trump. Maybe we should start worrying,” Chappatte wrote on his personal website.
Bennet said the newspaper hoped to keep working with Chappatte and fellow contributor Heng Kim Song on other projects.
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger announced in May that disciplinary steps would be taken against the editor who published the cartoon.
