Post Editor Who Spoke Out Against Racist Cartoon is Fired

By BET.com Staff
Oct. 8, 2009

The New York Post editor who spoke against a racist cartoon in her paper that likened President Obama to a dead chimpanzee has been fired from her job.

Officials at the Rupert Murdock-owned tabloid issued a statement to the Huffington Post saying that Sandra Guzman had been released because Tempo, the monthly in-paper insert she edits, had been nixed.

But some at the paper believe that the editor had been in the newspaper’s dog house ever since she blasted the decision to run a cartoon that sparked a national controversy five months ago. In February, renowned cartoonist Sean Delonas drew a satirical piece for the Post showing two White police officers standing over a dead chimp riddled with bullet holes; one of the officers had a smoking gun in his hand. “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says to the other.

Black leaders and others were outraged at the cartoon, particularly because Obama was widely viewed as the author of the stimulus bill.

At the time, Guzman wrote a note to fellow journalists saying, "I neither commissioned nor approved it. I saw it in the paper yesterday with the rest of the world. And, I have raised my objections to management."

Several of Guzman’s colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her firing seemed like payback.

"I think ever since then, she has been on their sh*t list and they were trying to look for a reason to get rid of her," a Post employee told Huffington.

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