Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes is leaving the Washington Post after nearly two decades due to what she claims was editorial interference at the paper.
In a post to her Substack on Friday, Telnaes claimed an editor at the paper killed a cartoon depicting billionaires groveling to President-elect Donald Trump this week. The shared rough draft of the comic included Post owner Jeff Bezos holding up a bag of money at the feet of a looming Trump.
“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 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.”
In addition to Bezos, the cartoon features Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI boss Sam Altman, and fellow newspaper owner Patrick Soon-Shiong of the LA Times. It came as billionaires and tech giants pledged massive sums of cash for Trump’s inauguration and signaled openness to working with the president-elect, Telnaes said.
Telnaes explained that while editorial tweaks are commonplace, an editor wished to suppress her commentary, not her cartoon.
“There have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never 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.
Bezos and the Post previously drew criticism last year when senior leadership at the paper killed the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, a move critics argued was a bid to appease then-potential winner Trump in advance. That decision sparked an exodus of staff and subscribers, which Bezos and Post leadership have failed to curtail.
Bezos’s cozying up continued after President-elect Trump won the election, with the billionaire congratulating him in a post to X and meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning because, as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
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