Apple Blocks Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist From App Store

Mark Fiore made a little online history this week by being the first web-only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize. His editorial cartoons, though, were rejected from the App Store for violating Apple's anti-satire provisions. That's a dangerous precedent.

A lot of hay has been made over the App Store's policies, particularly over apps that are deemed pornographic (or bikini-ridden). But it looks as though the concerns raised earlier by German magazine Stern are becoming more and more legitimized: Apple's making judgments on editorial content.

According to Laura McGann at the Nieman Journalism Lab, Fiore received the following email from Apple in late December in response to the submission of his NewsToons app:

Dear Mr. Fiore,

Thank you for submitting NewsToons to the App Store. We've reviewed NewsToons and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states...