Suncorp Bank has made the decision to remove its advertising from The Australian following the controversy of the Bill Leak cartoon depicting Indigenous Australians, which received a landslide of criticism.
Suncorp announced on Twitter that it “definitely [does] not support the cartoon”.
UPDATE: Suncorp denies it will pull all ads from The Australian.
In addition, it claimed it is “working with our media placement agencies to remove our advertising from this content”.
@Vandellous We are now working with our media placement agencies to remove our advertising from this content. – Isabelle
— Suncorp Bank (@suncorpbank) August 5, 2016
@BlayneTreadgold We have removed our advertising from the content, and have temporarily suspended any future placements. 1/2
— Suncorp Bank (@suncorpbank) August 5, 2016
@BlayneTreadgold We utilise a number of different sites for our advertising, and in most cases the placements are selected at random. 2/3
— Suncorp Bank (@suncorpbank) August 5, 2016
@BlayneTreadgold Placements do not reflect the page or article. – Isabelle
— Suncorp Bank (@suncorpbank) August 5, 2016
In addition to this blow for The Oz, the Adelaide Festival is now also reviewing further ads, claiming it placed its current ads on the website “well in advance of Bill Leak’s disgraceful cartoon”.
Per The Guardian, the festival said, “The Adelaide festival does not endorse the sentiments of Bill Leak’s cartoon. The festival deplores all forms of racism and editorial commentary that vilifies Australia’s First Nations people: it betrays the complex economic, social and cultural issues that face many Indigenous communities with racist stereotypes.
“The Adelaide festival and the artistic directors, Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, have a long history of providing a platform for contemporary Indigenous creative expression and will continue to do this proudly into the future.
“It is through the power of creative storytelling that the diversity of Indigenous history and experiences have most successfully been shared with the broader Australian community.”
But amid the vitriol, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker defended the cartoon, maintaining, “Bill Leak’s confronting and insightful cartoons force people to examine the core issues in a way that sometimes reporting and analysis can fail to do”.
Leak published the following cartoon in the wake of the criticism, poking fun at the criticism both him and the paper received.
