A Washington Post cartoonist has resigned from her position at the newspaper, saying her bosses blocked the publication of a satirical cartoon depicting billionaires, including one who resembled Post owner Jeff Bezos, kneeling before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, said in a blog post Friday that she left the newspaper after a cartoon was rejected. This was the first time at the Post that a cartoon was “deleted by who or what I chose to point my pen at,” Telnaes wrote.
A sketch of the cartoon, posted on Telnaes’ Substack blog, shows several men kneeling before a larger man wearing a suit and long tie, representing Trump. Telnaes wrote that the images are of Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Bezos. Three of the men hold bags of money. Also included is a drawing of the cartoon character Mickey Mouse, representing Walt Disney’s ABC News.
The drawing was flatly rejected by the newspaper, with no suggestions for possible changes, Telnaes told CNBC in an email.
David Shipley, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, said in a statement that the cartoon was rejected because of its similarity to the newspaper’s columns, not because of who it was aimed at.
“I respect Ann Telnaes and everything she has given to the Post. But I must disagree with your interpretation of events. Not all editorial judgments are a reflection of an evil force. My decision was due to the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled the publication of another column, this time a satire. The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley’s statement read.
The cartoonist’s departure comes amid controversy over how the media and corporate executives have been treating Trump, both before and after the November election.
The Washington Post reported that Bezos pushed for a planned endorsement of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, by the newspaper ahead of the presidential election. At the Los Angeles Times, Soon-Shiong also decided that the newspaper should withdraw any endorsement of the presidential race, prompting the resignation of several members of the editorial board.
Meanwhile, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million, drawing criticism from some media law experts who thought the news organization had a strong case.
Bezos and Zuckerberg, through Meta, planned to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, the Wall Street Journal reported last month, and have been among several billionaires to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home since his electoral victory. Various outlets have reported that OpenAI’s Altman is also donating $1 million to the inauguration fund.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., weighed in on Telnaes’ resignation on Bezos like paying a lower tax rate than a public school teacher.”
Telnaes’ departure is the latest of several internal restructurings at the Post. Publisher and CEO Will Lewis took over the paper last year and clashed with the newsroom, NPR reported. Several top editors at the paper have left since Lewis took over.
Telnaes won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 2001. He wrote on his blog that he had worked for the Post since 2008.
