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Jobs Rewrites History About Apple Ban on Satire

Steve Jobs dabbled in a bit of revisionist history onstage at the AllThingsD conference Tuesday, saying that Apple had fixed its iPhone store ban on political cartooning before political cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize, an honor that came just months after Apple rejected his app for “ridiculing public figures.” Jobs’s swing at the […]

Steve Jobs dabbled in a bit of revisionist history onstage at the AllThingsD conference Tuesday, saying that Apple had fixed its iPhone store ban on political cartooning before political cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize, an honor that came just months after Apple rejected his app for "ridiculing public figures."

Jobs's swing at the ugly case of Mark Fiore appeared to miss and, instead of clearing the air, left the broad subject of Apple's vetting media apps as murky as ever -- and provoked the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist anew.

Fiore, for his part, disputes Jobs' narrative. And more importantly, he wonders whether Apple has even changed its iPhone and iPad media-app policies -- not surprising given that the text of the app store rules applied to him haven't changed a bit in the meantime. He considers Apple's secretive and seemingly arbitrary rule over what apps get to run on its pioneering iPhone and iPad to be a danger to a free press and a healthy democracy. And so do many media watchers.

In fact, Fiore is hardly alone in having a political cartoon app rejected by Apple, and an open letter from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists to Apple about its policies remains unanswered.

Here's what Jobs said, according to the AllThingsD write-up:

"We have a rule that says you can't defame people," Jobs said, noting that political cartoonists by virtue of their profession sometimes defame people. The cartoon app was rejected on those grounds, he adds. "Then we changed the rules … and in the meantime, the cartoonist won a Pulitzer…. But he never resubmitted his app. And then someone asked him, 'Hey why don't you have an iPhone app?' He says we rejected it and suddenly, it's a story in the press…. Bottom line is, yes, we sometimes make mistakes … but we correct them…. We are doing the best we can, changing the rules when it makes sense. What happens sometimes is that some people lie, we find it, and reject it, and they run to the press, and get their 15 minutes of fame and hope it will get us to change our minds. We take it on the chin, and we move on."

Engadget transcribed Jobs' comments as follows:

Steve: [...] So this guy submits his app and he gets rejected. We didn't see that coming. So we changed the rule, but this guy never resubmitted ... then he wins a Pulitzer Prize, and he says we rejected him. So, we are guilty of making mistakes. We're doing the best we can, we're learning as fast as we can -- but we thought this rule made sense.

That's an interesting take on Fiore's experience, and not in line with what seems to have happened. He submitted his NewsToons app -- which simply plays his animated cartoon from his YouTube channel -- in December. Apple promptly rejected it saying:

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: Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.

So, Apple rejected his political cartoon for ridiculing public figures -- not for being defamatory. (Defaming someone is a whole other level of ridicule, involving libel or slander definitions). While Apple's App store police did tell Fiore he could re-submit if he could make the application fit the criteria, there is no possible way for a political cartoonist to make an app that doesn't ridicule public figures.

So Fiore wrote the project off. Months later, he won the Pulitzer Prize. Then a student journalist writing a profile of him asked why he didn't have an iPhone app. Fiore answered honestly. The student journalist realized she had hit news, and the story took off. Hearing about the furor, Apple wrote Fiore to ask him to resubmit and the exact same app was approved.

But Jobs says the real story is that in the interval between the rejection and Fiore's award, Apple had changed its policy because it realized that blocking Fiore was dumb. But despite that supposed change, the company never contacted Fiore and asked him to try again.

Which is baffling since the new iPhone SDK -- the controversial one that bans making apps using code-translation tools -- contains the exact same language for content as the old one did. It just has a new number: 3.3.17.

3.3.17 Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.

Or, as Fiore told Wired.com in an e-mail:

What I am seeking is a clarification from Apple on their policy regarding satire and "ridiculing public figures," and a response to the letter the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists wrote Mr. Jobs. I fully support their right to pick and choose bad or good content for their store, but a blanket ban on ridicule is, um, ridiculous. If the doors are now open to satire and ridicule of public figures, then Steve Jobs has indeed corrected his "mistake."

I've always made a point of being open about my whole experience with Apple and have never sought out confrontation. My NewsToons app was, in fact, rejected.... The reason I never resubmitted the app was because I wasn't about to make the changes Apple sought and remove any "content that ridicules public figures." Ridiculing public figures is what I do and is an essential part of journalism.

I'm in the process of improving and updating the NewsToons app and would love to know whether or not Apple has changed their policy regarding satire, because this isn't just about me, it's about a promising new future for journalism.

Wired.com asked Apple to clarify Steve Jobs' remarks, but the company instead referred us to a Wired magazine reporter who was at the event to "put it in context."

So a word of warning to publications and cartoonists: The app store remains Apple's -- the rules for who is in and who is out are as murky as ever -- and Apple reserves the right to dissemble about what its policies are, even if you do manage to get in.

Photo: Steve Jobs speaking onstage at the AllThingsD conference on June 1, 2010. Credit: Asa Mathat | All Things Digital.

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