Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- “Bad news is good news for cartoonists,” says Carsten Graabaek. “You can’t make fun of good news.”

Graabaek, a 61-year-old Danish cartoonist, says he’s inspired by the dire economic situation. His Israeli counterpart Michel Kishka, 46, agrees: “We can’t ignore the recession. The difficulty is finding original ways of visualizing it.”

Political cartoonists differ over how to react to the world economic recession, and they worry that it may affect the media and their own impact on readers. Worse still, many say that their freedom of expression is being eroded.

Peter Brookes, 65, of the Times of London, says he finds the crisis hard to draw. “It’s everywhere, it’s in the headlines day after day, and yet there is not much that is specific. It’s not like rows or bust-ups between leaders,” Brookes says.

He says, though, that he doesn’t have a financial mind, and assumes that that’s the case for most of the general public.

“Even if I did have a good financial brain, it’s hard to get the subject across,” Brookes says. “If I were to draw something about the recession on a daily basis it would flop. It would just go over people’s heads. The subject is too intangible.”

The pressures that weigh on cartoonists are both political and professional. Shrinking press outlets, political correctness and freedom of expression are major issues.

‘Difficult Times’

“These are difficult times for us,” says Jean Plantu, who draws for Paris daily Le Monde. “One reason is the fracture between the Western and Muslim worlds, which are both equally arrogant. We say to the Arabs, ‘You don’t get it, we’ll explain democracy to you,’ and they use anti-Semitic imagery to depict Israelis.”

Plantu, 57, is behind “Cartooning for Peace,” an international association of cartoonists promoting civil rights. The initiative was launched in 2006 by then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was shocked by the anti- Semitism of Palestinian cartoonists and the Israelis’ assumption that all Arabs are suicide bombers. At the same time, people were dying around the globe in riots triggered by the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons about Mohammed.

The exhibition Permis de Croquer (Permit to Sketch), which runs through March 8, 2009, at the Bibliotheque Historique, in Paris, highlights the difficulties cartoonists face -- Russians banned from caricaturing President Putin, Iraqis not allowed to satirize almost anyone. In Denmark, a Tunisian refugee allegedly threatened to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who had drawn Mohammed wearing a bomb instead of a turban. In Algeria, the satirist Dilem spends much time in and out of court.

Mad Israeli

In a typical peace-promoting action last June, Plantu brought together cartoonists with virulently opposing views in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah. He was impressed by the level of dialogue.

“The Israeli cartoonist Shai Sharka came wearing a kippah,” Plantu says. “The others said, ‘are you mad?’ but he kept it on and put forward his views about the Occupied Territories. The audience applauded him. Here was an Israeli taking the trouble to explain his ideas.”

Plantu admires the U.K.’s political cartoonists who lampoon their politicians in ways he wouldn’t dare to, citing political correctness as an inhibiting force.

“We’re pussyfooting,” he says. “In France, we refer to the ‘elephants’ of the Socialist Party. But I wouldn’t be allowed to draw the party’s new leader Martine Aubry as an elephant because she’s a woman. The 17th-century moralist Jean de la Fontaine would not have been able to write his fables today.”

Diluted Drawings

Kishka highlights a problem common both to cartoonists and journalists. “There aren’t enough outlets,” he says. “Papers give cartoons less and less space.” In France, Plantu says that picture editors are so cowardly they’ll almost always choose a photo rather than a drawing. “Young cartoonists create their niches by producing watered-down drawings,” he says.

Drawings won’t change the world, Brookes says, but they are there to inform people or make them angry. “My cartoons are comments about how I see the world on any given day,” says the self-confessed news junkie.

Plantu’s view of cartoons is that they should broaden people’s minds. “I don’t mean drawing soppy doves, but doing drawings that are at once pertinent and impertinent,” he says. “Cartoons are the spearhead of freedom of expression.”

“Crises are good for us,” Kishka says. “They force us to find solutions to serious questions using the distance of humor.”

(Brigid Grauman writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Brigid Grauman in Brussels at brigid@skynet.be.

Last Updated: January 5, 2009 19:00 EST