Picture Perfect

By Nigel Middlemiss, Knowledge Director, Echo Research

One great thing that readers of the online and offline press can enjoy which Web 2.0 and broadcast consumers don't have is cartoons. They're a killer app when it comes to dismantling a reputation with a few scornful brushstrokes. And elections are happy days for cartoonists as some of their favourite targets, politicians, climb onstage. Thursday's 3-way TV debate produced a crop of sharp drawings underlining the distrust the political class tends to inspire currently across the board.

The Independent had all three leaders standing at their podiums, Clegg with a long wooden Pinocchio-style nose, Cameron with an equally long forked tongue, and Brown with his pants seriously on fire. The Times had a similar take, as in Peter Brookes' cartoon (reproduced here with Peter's permission).

Peter Brookes, The Times

The Guardian was less cynical. The paper that started life as a Liberal broadsheet showed Nick Clegg as a hero mouse wielding a massive executioner's axe, and Brown and Cameron as two medieval villains trembling in their boots.

No matter what your political stance (or state of progress in coming to one), I think you’ll find clever encapsulations of campaign moments to be found in the next 3 weeks at:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/fun-games/cartoons/

The opinions and views expressed in this blog are the personal opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Echo Research, its staff or any of its affiliates.