Apple Barred App By Pulitzer-Prize Winning Cartoonist Mark Fiore

This is more than a little creepy.

According to the Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard, Apple (AAPL) has refused to cartoonist Mark Fiore, who this week won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons, to distribute an app called NewsToons in the App Store, apparently due to the political nature of his political cartoons.

The rejection letter, which was issued in December, was posted on the Neiman site, and reads as follows:

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:

“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple�s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.” Examples of such content have been attached for your reference.

If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that NewsToons does not violate the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

The Neiman post notes that Apple attached screen shots of the offending material, “including an image depicting the White House gate crashers interrupting an Obama speech. Two other grabs include images referencing torture, Balloon Boy, and various political issues.

It’s one thing for Apple to ban porn; but putting the kibosh on satire seems a little over the top, no?