Editorial Cartoonist Quits Post After Bezos Cartoon Rejected

Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist who has been with The Washington Post since 2008, has announced her resignation. The decision came after the Post rejected a cartoon she had submitted that depicted Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaires kneeling in front of a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

In a Substack post, Telnaes wrote that the idea behind the cartoon was to criticize billionaire tech and media chief executives she said "have been doing their best to curry favor" with Trump. She added that the paper's decision to kill the cartoon was "a game changer…and dangerous for a free press."

"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable," she continued. "For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post."

The Post's opinions editor, David Shipley, said in a statement that while he respected Telnaes and her work for the publication, he "must disagree with her interpretation of events."

"Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force," he said. "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, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 2001, has long been an advocate for free speech and editorial cartoons as a tool for civic debate. She serves on the advisory board for the Geneva-based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and was formerly a board member of Cartoonists Rights.

"Democracy Dies in Darkness.