Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

One for those of you who are interested in the niche world of editorial cartooning. We have an 'anonymous' in the United States who is using his anonymity to offer some trenchant criticism of what it is fellow professionals are saying in their work. He calls himself the Bad cartoonist. Needless to say, it is kicking up a lovely stink which Alan Gardner is reporting on at his Daily Cartoonist blog.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Joseph Stiglitz - former chief economist at the world bank has co-written a book in which he attempts to measure the cost of the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. There's a good article about it in the Guardian today.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Click the picture or see it published here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The book Flat earth news on the struggle for the soul of newspaper reporting has been getting a lot of media attention in the last month. This is unsurprising in itself as there is absolutely nothing media professionals like better than discussing themselves. The author Nick Davies raises some very smelly issues about what has happened to newspapers during the time I have worked in them. And his line about PR providing a 'solution' to the problem of volume news provision while journalists have been fighting chronic underfunding of editorial teams, certainly rings true to me. There's a review of the book from the London Review of Books here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Preparations for the Labour party spring conference in Birmingham this weekend.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Hack cartoons living caricature of singer Amy Winehouse.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Please click the picture for the Fidel Castro animated cartoon. Or click here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Found by Alex Hilton at Recess Monkey and circulated by Liberal Conspiracy - among others.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Please click the picture for the latest Hack at Channel 4 News Northern Rock cartoon.
The inevitable nationalisation has been announced after the temptation of private enterprise with oodles of taxpayers cash was found to have failed. There's some typically pithy analysis from Paul Linford here, although it was written pre-the Rock nationalisation announcement. Today's Channel 4 News cartoon published here.
UPDATED: There is also an FACTCHECK analysis from Channel 4 here about the shifting position on nationalisation over the past five months.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

A summation of where we are with the copyright of content creators from Shane Richmond at the Telegraph.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Coming soon...

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

It's beginning to look like the end of the Clinton affairs isn't it? I thought Hillary would get the Democratic nomination and perhaps she still might, but it does seem to be a perhaps now. Obama has a clear momentum and if she can't win large numbers of delegates in Texas and Ohio on March 4th - and win well, I'd say we are looking at a Obama-McCain race in the autumn. I fear, if that happens the head-to-head will end up being a referendum on race and age, but it will make a change from gender issues. I wonder sometimes whether all female political candidates in America would fare better if they all automatically looked and behaved like the Neo-Con eccentric Ann Coulter - blonde, leggy and without an obviously coherent thought or opinion in their heads.

Published by Channel 4 News.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Six detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison are to face military tribunals for involvement in the 11th September, 2001, attack on New York. Image drawn for Tribune.

And on another subject entirely, Garry Smith at Big Sticks, small carrots has an entertaining tale available here.


Matt Buck’s animated drawings

New drawing for No2ID. There is an link to a leaked document from the government here. It is interesting to track the way in which the non-compulsory ID cards will become compulsory for the younger members of our society. Link from Anorak. The BBC pen profile of No2ID is here. No2id themselves live here and there is a handy guide to directions to your local interview centre for your very own card here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Archbishop Rowan's argument that bits of religious law ought to be above the civil law was lost sometime back in the age of reason.
As can often occur, Chicken Yogurt puts it elegantly in words.
at my harshest I regard all this little more than the captain of one set counter-Enlightenment values speaking out on another set of counter-Enlightenment values.
UPDATED: 14 Feb 2008
If you have the energy, there is a good and thorugh piece of detective work about the speech, the interview and its aftermath by Matt Wardman. It points a finger in an interesting direction...

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Blogs and digital publications are starting to experience some growing pains about who owns what imagery and how each publication can use other people's digital content. The particular case I want to talk about concerns I and my colleague at Channel 4, Beau Bo D'Or, but there have been lots of other recent cases*. In ours, some of our work has been hotlinked on very popular blogs, notably Paul Staines’s Guido Fawkes’s Diary. There's a clip of one of the front pages of my animations here.

I want to make clear at this point that as far as I know, no one has complained, legally, about what he did, although I know Beau Bo D'Or (Neil Hepburn) exchanged several emails with Paul about it. The screen grab above of Guido Fawkes is interesting here (double click the image and look at the orange circle bottom left). There is also plenty of technical evidence he was hotlinking to Channel 4's servers, which is using** their bandwidth instead of his own. I was slightly surprised at this behaviour as Paul is reputed to be wealthy, or to have, access to the sort of funds which would allow him to pay for his own bandwidth. Bandwidth is the telecoms capacity which supplies us the pages we see on the web.

Tim 'Bloggerheads' Ireland has done a thorough job on explaining what has happened. Unfortunately, his initial investigation has got mixed up with the personal emnity which he and Paul Staines share. Paul responded by sending a threatening solicitors letter to Tim. This was a shame as it obscured the more important matter and this may, of course, been why he did it.

Paul and I, and other people like us, who are successful publishers and who are actively promoting our work for commercial gain have a responsibility to think about both what we are publishing - and how we are publishing it. I'd expect better behaviour from a man who chooses to associate himself with someone who wanted to reconfigure parliament.

Follow-up links: Technical
What is hotlinking? from Wikipedia

* Previous cases
Famous theft of images from digital to print from The Great Architect

** UPDATED: I have edited out the previous reference to stealing bandwidth after a comment from blogger John B who made comment 5 for this piece. Thanks for pointing that innacurate use of language out John.

UPDATED UPDATE
Why do all this writing about something so small? Perceptively skewered here

Personal:
Bloggerheads Tim Ireland
Guido Fawkes Paul Staines
Beau Bo D’Or Neil Hepburn

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Well after all that, nothing is decided at all. It looks to have been a costly night for the Billaries for despite confident and widely publicised expectations, they have not knocked Obama out of the race for the Democratic nomination. They can't be happy about that, and if the stories about the amount of telephone polling Hillary's campaign used in the last few days are true, she must have used a lot of money to try and fight the momentum Obama had clearly developed. For Obama's part, he must be disappointed he didn't do better yet. The Republican race looks clearer and has clarified the split in their ranks, Mike Huckabee, the former preacher did well in the south, where I used to live, and this seems to have hurt the wealthy Mitt Romney's chances. So, John McCain it looks to be. (I wonder how Ming Campbell feels about the apparent attitudes to John McCain's age?) There is an updated Channel 4 News animation here.
UPDATED:
Wonkette has a great description of the night as a pretty much a grim $100-million stalemate.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Published on America's Super Tuesday. Or, click the picture.
UPDATED: All about Hillary and all about Barack.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

From Nick Davies via Lloyd Shepherd and the UKPG. I am indulging in pure churnalism here, but this bit is worth it because the original source, is original.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Published here.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings