To clarify, this is obviously a bad thing if it happened like he says, but since the press is free, his employer is allowed to fire him and find someone who will express a different opinion. It's a pretty bonehead decision to fire someone over a nearly completely inoffensive cartoon though...
Some party does something many would find ill-conceived, reprehensible, or in some way greedy. Some other people come out declaring that the action wasn't illegal.
It's interesting to me, because often the legality of the situation isn't even in question (edit: as it is in this article).
The person above you is responding to the claim that this was unconstitutional, which is most certainly is not.
That's -- still -- an understatement. The right to freedom of the press in the Constitution is exactly the right of the publisher to exert editorial control. Doing so is not merely not unconstitutional, it is Constitutionally protected.
You have no more Constitutional right to control someone else's press because "freedom of the press" than you have to direct someone else's vote because "right to vote".
What this does say is that the editor didn't review the comic before printing it, and then fired the cartoonist after the fact. This seems unfair to me and I sympathize, but it is entirely within his rights.
So? That's another issue to fix, not a justification for this being a non-issue.
https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2012/12/19/breaking-down-...
It's a very good idea, and it should be preserved and fought for, but it's not an idea that has any basis in the Constitution.
"Not technically illegal" is not much of a claim to morality, obviously. Firing a cartoonist because an advertiser doesn't like him is against the public interest, and probably against the long-term interests of the paper itself; it's a bad idea and the people who did it should feel bad, and they deserve all the bad press they get.