A Washington Post cartoonist has quit her role on the newspaper, saying her bosses blocked publication of a satirical cartoon depicting billionaires, including one who resembles Post owner Jeff Bezos, kneeling before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaesa Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, said in a blog post Friday that she Stop the newspaper after a drawing has been rejected. This was the primary time that a cartoon on the Post was “killed because of who or what I aimed the pen at,” Telnaes wrote.
A rough sketch of the cartoon posted on Telnaes' Substack blog shows several men kneeling before a bigger man wearing a suit and long tie, representing Trump. Telnaes wrote that they were similarities Metaplatforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Bezos. Three of the lads are holding bags stuffed with money. Also included is a drawing of the cartoon character Mickey Mouse depicting Walt Disneyis ABC News.
The drawing was rejected outright by the newspaper, with no suggestions for possible changes, Telnaes told CNBC in an email.
David Shipley, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, said in a press release that the cartoon was rejected due to its similarity to columns within the newspaper, slightly than its target market.
“I respect Ann Telnaes and everything she has given to the Post. But I have to disagree with her interpretation of events. Not every editorial judgment reflects a malevolent power. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same subject as the cartoon and had already planned another column – this time a satire – for publication. The only bias was against reruns,” Shipley’s statement said.
The cartoonist's departure comes amid controversy over how media and executives treated Trump each before and after the November election.
The Washington Post reported that Bezos pushed through the newspaper's planned support of Trump opponent Kamala Harris within the run-up to the presidential election. At the Los Angeles Times, Soon-Shiong also decided the paper should do that refuse any approval within the presidential race, which led to the resignation of several editorial board members.
ABC News, meanwhile, settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $15 million, drawing criticism from some media law experts who believed the news organization had a powerful case.
Bezos and Zuckerberg planned to donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund through Meta The Wall Street Journal reported last monthand were amongst several billionaires who met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home since his election victory. Several media outlets have reported that this can also be the case with OpenAI's Altman Donate $1 million to the inauguration fund.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., weighed in on the resignation of Telnaes on “
Telnaes' departure is the latest of several internal upheavals at the Post. Publisher and CEO Will Lewis took over the paper last year and ran afoul of the newsroom reported by NPR. Several of the newspaper's top editors have left the paper since Lewis took over.
Telnaes won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons. She wrote in her blog that she had worked for the post office since 2008.
image credit : www.cnbc.com