(libel not liable - I hope I can point that out to someone for whom English is not their first language without being a douchebag) Things get sticky when it comes to journalism. On the one hand, it's a for-profit, commercial venture. On the other hand, it's a for-profit, commercial venture whose civic duty is to provide critique and criticism of the actions of those in power. In the US, the classic example of cartoons and political freedom is Tammany Hall and Thomas Nast, whereby a large organization with monolithic control over much of the state apparatus around them was brought down by a cartoonist. Another example would be the lack of criticism of any Hearst-owned property by the papers of William Randolph Hearst. The argument is this: it may offend the sponsor to be criticized, and it may be within the rights of the publisher to terminate the cartoonist... but it does not serve the interests of the subscribers for their content to only be that which is approved by the sponsors. Obviously, pretty much every journalistic organization deals with this on some level; this is, chapter and verse, the definition of editorial independence. You're right. The sponsor can do whatever the fuck he wants to do. The editor, on the other hand, is supposed to protect his journalists. In this case, he didn't.