Apple Asks Cartoonist Mark Fiore to Resubmit iPhone App

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, for the WSJ Digits weblog:

The cartoonist who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning this week says Apple has asked him to resubmit an iPhone app that it earlier rejected because it “ridicules public figures.” […]

A representative from Apple called the cartoonist Thursday and suggested that he resubmit the app, Mr. Fiore said in an interview. “I feel kind of guilty,” he said. “I’m getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer.”

It’s not the Pulitzer that got him the phone call, it’s the publicity over his app’s rejection. (Of course, the publicity is largely fueled by his winning the Pulitzer.)

This sort of app should not have been rejected in the first place — shouldn’t even have been considered borderline. Resubmission and hoping for a different reviewer sometimes works in cases like this, but at this point, there’s no way for us to know whether Fiore is getting reconsidered only because of the publicity stink. It’s possible that it really is Apple’s policy to reject any app related to political satire. It’s also possible that it is not. That’s the core problem — that we don’t know.

★ Friday, 16 April 2010