In May 2012, Media Lens had an exchange on twitter with cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson. Rowson had published a cartoon after the Houla massacre depicting a bloodstained Bashar al-Assad. The cartoon also depicted "Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde lashing a pile of human bones with euro-laden cats-o’-nine-tails". Media Lens asked Rowson what evidence about the massacre he had used in drawing his cartoon. When Rowson replied that he had "no more evidence than media &amp; UN reports, like anyone else. Also used cartoonist’s hunch", Media Lens asked whether he would "rely on a “hunch” in depicting Obama and Cameron with mouths smeared with the blood of massacred children?" "Tribune magazine" published an article by Howson about the exchange in which he asked why Media Lens had not sought his "evidence for alleging that Merkel and Lagarde have really truly desecrated corpses, as depicted in my cartoon". He said one possible reason was they were "shilling for tyrants".