Washington Post cartoonist resigns after Jeff Bezos satire gets rejected

Ann Telnaes resigns from Washington Post after rejection of Bezos satire; editor defends decision.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from The Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish her satirical cartoon featuring the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos.

Telnaes, who had worked at the paper since 2008, created a cartoon depicting Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump while offering bags of cash. The cartoon also included Mickey Mouse in a prostrate position.

 

 

 

 

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Telnaes described the decision to reject the cartoon as a “game changer,” calling it “dangerous for a free press.” She argued that the cartoon was meant to criticize powerful tech and media executives who were trying to gain favor with the incoming Trump administration.

Telnaes also stated that she had never before had a cartoon killed for its subject matter.

In her resignation post on Substack, Telnaes wrote, “In all that time I've never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

She explained that the cartoon targeted executives with lucrative government contracts and interests in eliminating regulations, pointing to their actions during Trump’s election period.

However, David Shipley, the editorial page editor at The Washington Post, defended the decision not to run the cartoon, stating that it was based on editorial judgment rather than bias towards Bezos. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication,” Shipley said in a statement. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” he added.

This is not the first time Telnaes’ work has been spiked by The Washington Post. In 2015, the newspaper retracted a cartoon by Telnaes that depicted the young daughters of Senator Ted Cruz as monkeys, with the newspaper citing its editorial policy to avoid involving children in political cartoons.

The controversy comes at a time when Bezos has been involved in political dealings with Trump. In addition to Amazon’s $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration fund, Bezos had praised Trump's re-election victory and dined with him at Mar-a-Lago.

The paper also faced backlash ahead of the 2020 presidential election when Bezos intervened to prevent the editorial board from endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The newspaper reported a loss of more than 250,000 subscribers following that decision.

Similar tensions over editorial independence were also seen at the Los Angeles Times, whose owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, was also depicted in the rejected cartoon.

Like The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times chose not to publish an endorsement of Harris in October.