Last Updated: October 01, 1996
Printer-friendly version
Bruce Tinsley has never told a Dan Quayle joke.
As the artist behind the Mallard Fillmore strip, Tinsley is one of the few conservative voices in cartooning today (plus he's just heard too many Quayle jokes).
When he heard about a survey indicating that journalists based in Washington were liberal and that America's newspaper editors were holding a convention with Newt Gingrich as a speaker, it was too good to resist: He soon had a week's worth of strips that ran in mid-May. (He drew them about the time of the convention).
The survey Tinsley refers to in the strips, conducted by the Roper organiztion for The Freedom Forum, found that the vast majority of Washington correspondents voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 (89 percent) and that 61 percent considered themselves "liberal" or "liberal to moderate." The survey indicated that newspaper editors on the whole are more conservative - 32 percent "liberal" or "liberal to moderate" - although 60 percent of them voted for Clinton.
Tinsley says his sense of it mirrors that.
"My only experience is with pretty liberal editors. I don't know if they're representative, but the editorial pages and the way they cover the news is pretty liberal."
He thinks that bodes ill for America.
"I think we're in for dangerous times if we don't get a more diverse voice in the media," he said.
Although diversity of race and gender is considered important to journalists, diversity of viewpoint isn't, he said.
"Who is reporting the news affects what is reported," and for journalists to set the study aside and say they can work around their biases is ludicrous.
The solution is tricky, though. "I wouldn't prescribe going out and recruiting conservatives; I'm not sure the pool of conservative journalists is that big. I think a lot of it has to do with the kind of person who wants to go into journalism. But first we need to recognize there's a problem."
After years of cartooning for newspapers (including stints in both writing and editing), Tinsley said he was fired in 1986 as the cartoonist for the Charlottesville (Va.) Daily Progress for "being too conservative." Mallard Fillmore was born soon after. The strip was nationally syndicated in 1994 and now appears in more than 400 newspapers.
Does it bother him to make fun of the very editors who decide to run him in their papers? No, he says. He has made fun of journalists - in broadcast and print - for years.
The self-described "antidote to Doonesbury," would like to see Mallard Fillmore positioned on the editorial or op-ed page rather than the comics page. Ideally, it would appear with Garry Trudeau's work nearby, he said.
Despite his "antidote" quip, Tinsley doesn't begrudge the more established cartoonist.
"You can't argue with his success," Tinsley said.
Branson is publications director for ASNE.
