The left again. Surprising, as I thought Leunig was somewhat to the left. But clearly, he saw the light, so he was fired. Welcome to the real world, post Covid
No doubt The Age was part of the partisan Melbourne media that fawned over Daniel Andrews for locking up Melbournians.Legendary cartoonist Michael Leunig says it’s ‘embarrassing’ to have been associated with The Age
In what he described as a “throat-cutting exercise”, the 79-year-old said he was left gobsmacked after reading Age editorPatrick Elligett’s subscriber email newsletter on Friday night which said the cartoonist had “filed his last editorial illustration for The Age”.
Although Leunig had received a call from Elligett days earlier to tell him his time was up, the cartoonist was stunned when the editor’s note failed to reference the circumstances of his departure.
“There was no mention of the fact that he (Elligett) gave me the axe,” Leunig told Diary.
“I was expecting it, as I have parted ways with The Age philosophically (and) culturally. I don’t read it really, I just scan it. It’s a sad story because I began there when it was a substantial newspaper.
“It’s almost embarrassing now to say that I worked for The Age, it’s become like a tacky tabloid.”
Leunig, who lives in regional Victoria, filed his first illustration for The Age in 1969 but said the relationship between him and the Nine Entertainment-owned newspaper became strained under former editorGay Alcornwhen the paper took a firm editorial position in favour of COVID-19 lockdowns.
“I just had to raise questions, as did a lot of people, about the severity of the Covid measures and this was intolerable, these things kept getting not published without any explanation or discussion,” he said.
“It was kind of like being sent to Coventry, you don’t exist.
“It was almost a lonely kind of position, there was never any contact from anyone … I was just left out on a rock.”
In 2020 Leunig submitted multiple cartoons about former Victorian premierDaniel Andrews’ extreme lockdown measures that were pulled, amid speculation that senior editors were concerned it could upsetThe Age’s largely left-leaning readership base, which was broadly in favour of lockdowns.
Another one of Leunig’s cartoons that drew the ire of The Age’s management portrayed a lone protester standing in front of a loaded syringe, referencing the iconic image of a protester in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
It was a pointed message of resistance to Covid vaccinations but the illustration, submitted in 2021, was also never published.
Not long after, Leunig was dumped from the news pages of The Age, and shunted to the masthead’s Spectrum weekend section, for which he filed one weekly cartoon.
Leunig said the sudden conclusion to his tenure at The Age was a “blunt and unfortunate way to end it.”
“I’ve had so many emails and comments coming in, it’s astonishing and overwhelming, I didn’t realise how much the work had meant to so many people,” he said.
Despite his professional prowess, Leunig said he never entered any journalism awards but in 1999 he was recognised as one of 100 Australian National Living Treasures.
Reflecting on his six decades in the media industry, Leunig told Diary that the work of cartoonists had changed for the worse.
“I feel cartooning is just not as free, it’s as if the editors are under very strict instructions from above or something,” Leunig said.
“It’s oppressive.”
In a scathing piece that he published on his own website last week,Leunig said mainstream cartoonists were damaged goods. “It’s all so sanctimonious now,” he wrote.
Leunig said The Age had “become a cold, imperious and humourless culture which seemed smug and unwell”, and accused the masthead of censorship, via “a message relayed to him from above to not mention Gaza”.
Leunig added that the “institution which most needed to be questioned, shaken and satirised was the mainstream media – but of course, this was out of bounds”.
“Australian mainstream cartoonists can’t be so funny, spirited and naughty anymore; they are not free enough, they don’t have as much ink on their hands as they once did,” he mused.
“They are mostly over-educated, they don’t end up in court on charges of offensive publishing like they used to, they clamour too much after neat punch lines and the self-congratulations of cosy, dubious media awards.
“They don’t have the support and encouragement of courageous or adventurous editors. In the face of the new authoritarian groupthink and a more sinister crazy world, most of them are too much under the thumb and can’t or won’t see it.”
