‘I’ve Never Had A Cartoon Killed … Until Now’: WaPo Cartoonist Quits After Critical Sketch Pulled From Publication
Longtime Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit her job at the paper after it declined to publish a cartoon of hers satirizing its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos.
Telnaes, hired in 2008, cited free speech concerns when the Post dropped her cartoon criticizing recent perceived relationships between tech and media moguls and President-elect Donald Trump, according to a Substack post of hers published Friday.
“I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now,” Telnaes said.
The cartoon depicted Bezos, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse representing the Walt Disney Company and media outlet ABC News bending the knee and offering money to a likeness of Trump. (RELATED: Major Media Outlet Forced To Pay $15,000,000 To Trump)
The moguls had been “doing their best to curry favor with [Trump],” according to Telnaes.
Ann Telnaes, who has worked at The Washington Post as an editorial cartoonist since 2008, says her cartoon below was killed — and now she has quit the paper pic.twitter.com/ThHbQiATOS
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 4, 2025
Washington Post Editorial Page editor David Shipley claimed responsibility for pulling Telnaes’s cartoon, according to Fox News. The D.C.-based outlet had reportedly scheduled two columns, one satirical, dealing with the same issue. Publishing Telnaes’s cartoon would be repetitive, he added.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Shipley said, according to Fox News. “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. The only bias was against repetition.”
Telnaes indicated she was not opposed to editorial criticism and that she had had “productive conversations” about her previous work. The editorial feedback had never been because of “the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press,” she wrote.
“There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago,” Telnaes wrote, explaining the inspiration for the cartoon and referencing a Post article on Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Dec. 18 dinner with Trump.
The dinner suggested Bezos mended fences with Musk and Trump and bolstered his expression of support for Trump’s interest in cutting through red tape, according to the Post’s article.
Several persons — including Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — supported Telnaes and criticized the “broligarchy.”
.@AnnTelnaes resigned after the Washington Post editorial page killed her cartoon. It’s worth a share.
Big Tech executives are bending the knee to Donald Trump and it’s no surprise why: Billionaires like Jeff Bezos like paying a lower tax rate than a public school teacher. pic.twitter.com/xv6e5dJVf4
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 4, 2025
Media outlets as public-facing entities ought to cultivate and their owners ought to safeguard free press, Telnaes added.
“[T]rying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press,” she wrote.
As soon as she tries to overturn an election and incite a mob to violently attack the US Capitol. pic.twitter.com/BIuF8YktP8
— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) September 6, 2024
Bezos and the Post took some heat when Bezos blocked the paper from endorsing a presidential candidate as the paper prepared to endorse the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos wrote he took the position because such endorsements make media outlets come across as biased. “Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” he wrote, adding that “no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here.”
