Pulitzer-Prize-Winner Ann Telnaes Quits the Washington Post After Editors Nix Cartoon Mocking Bezos (and His Tech/Media Mogul Cohorts) for Paying Fealty to Trump

Ann Telnaes, from her personal site (alas) on Substack:

I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but 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.

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. 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. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/OpenAI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner. [...]

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”.

The only thing wrong with the cartoon is that she drew it too soon to include Tim Cook. The cartoon isn’t even particularly scathing. I’d describe it as tame even. It shows these moguls as offering money to Trump — which they are! What a bizarre decision by Telnaes’s editors. It’d be like me getting offended if someone drew a cartoon that showed me wasting money betting on the Dallas Cowboys. If the shoe fits you have to wear it.

This isn’t a sign that the Washington Post has taken another turn for the worse. It’s simply proof of what many of us wrote before the election, when Bezos kiboshed the Post editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. In one fell swoop that decision collapsed the entirety of The Washington Post’s editorial integrity. This Telnaes fiasco is just more proof. More will follow until Bezos sells.

★ Saturday, 4 January 2025