Apple May Lift Free Speech Limits on Pulitzer-Winning Cartoonist Mark Fiore

Less than a week after he won the Pulitzer prize for editorial cartoons -- making him the first recipient of journalism's Big Prize among online cartoonists -- Mark Fiore is getting a second shot at creating an iPad app from Apple, which had previously shunned his work because it lampoons public figures.

As reported on the New York Times Media Decoder blog this afternoon, Fiore has been invited to resubmit the "NewsToons" app featuring his work. The Nieman Journalism Lab reported yesterday that Fiore's app had originally been rejected because it makes fun of politicians. Fiore won his Pulitzer for cartoons featured on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site.

Predictably, Apple appears to have backed down a bit in the face of the negative attention the news has generated, and Fiore told the Times that he has been invited to try again.

Meanwhile, we here at The Snitch are eagerly awaiting a real test of the Apple iPad censors. Think anyone plans to submit an app featuring cartoons of the prophet Muhammad?