Washington Post cartoonist quits after Bezos satire is rejected

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos.

Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of president-elect Donald Trump.

She said the paper’s refusal to run the cartoon was a “game changer” and described it as “dangerous for a free press”.

But David Shipley, the editorial page editor at the paper, said he decided not to run the cartoon in order to avoid repetition, not because it mocked the paper’s owner.

In the cartoon, Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are depicted on their knees giving bags of cash to a statue of Trump.

Mickey Mouse is also depicted prostrate in the cartoon. ABC News – which is owned by Disney – last month agreed to pay US$15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.

Telnaes announced her resignation in a Substack post on Friday, saying she had worked for the newspaper since 2008.

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote.

“Until now. The cartoon that was killed criticises the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favour with incoming president-elect Trump.”

She said the cartoon was satirising “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations”.

But Shipley told the BBC his decision not to publish the cartoon was because of repetition of another piece set to publish.

“I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I must disagree with her interpretation of events,” he said in a statement. “Not every editorial judgement is a reflection of a malign force.”

He added: “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.”

This is not the first time one of Telnaes’ cartoons has been spiked by the Washington Post.

In 2015, the newspaper retracted one of her sketches that depicted the young daughters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as monkeys.

Explaining its decision at the time, the newspaper said its editorial policy was to leave children “out of it”.

Last month, Bezos announced Amazon would donate US$1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and make a US$1 million in-kind contribution.

Bezos also described Trump’s re-election victory as “an extraordinary political comeback” and dined with him at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The newspaper faced a liberal backlash weeks before the November presidential election after Bezos interceded to prevent the editorial board endorsing vice president Kamala Harris.

Bezos defended the move, but the newspaper reported it lost more than 250 000 subscribers following the decision.

The Los Angeles Times, of which the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, is also depicted in the now-killed cartoon, made a similar move and said the newspaper would not publish its endorsement of Harris in October. – BBC