Here’s something you don’t see every day: NBCNews.com has published a slideshow of political cartoons… all attacking competitor Fox News Channel.
Some of the cartoons are from NBCNews.com cartoonist Daryl Cagle, with others culled from various cartoonists from newspapers and websites across the country.
As an editorial cartoonist, Cagle is effectively an opinion columnist (and his blog an opinion blog), something that every news website is chock full of. That said, it is somewhat unusual for a news organization to publish such a sloppy item trashing a competitor. Fox News Digital’s Fox Nation website is often critical of competitors, but the stories and headlines are user-submitted, and the content doesn’t migrate over to FoxNews.com.
“Cagle is a freelancer whose blog appears on NBCNews.com,” says an NBC News spokesperson. “With the upcoming launch of MSNBC’s online home, we’ll have much clearer lines between news and opinion. We’re still in transition after the acquisition from Microsoft.”