The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, has resigned from her position after the newspaper refused to publish a satirical cartoon depicting its owner, Jeff Bezos, and other media and technology barons, including Mark Zuckerberg, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Mickey Mouse, kneeling before Donald Trump as he prepares for his second presidency.
Telnaes wrote in an online post that she had never had a cartoon killed over the topic she chose to aim her pen at before, but this time, the newspaper’s opinions editor, David Shipley, disagreed with her “interpretation of events” and said the only bias was against repetition. Shipley stated that the Post had just published a column on the same topic and had another column scheduled for publication.
Telnaes described the cartoon as criticizing the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been trying to curry favor with Trump, and argued that the newspaper’s decision to reject the cartoon was “a game-changer… and dangerous for a free press.”
The news comes less than three months after the Post and Bezos faced backlash over the outlet’s decision to prevent its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after Trump’s victory, Zuckerberg dined with Trump and Meta donated $1 million to a fund for his second inauguration. Observers interpreted these gestures as conciliatory, following Trump’s criticism of Zuckerberg and his company during his first presidency.
Telnaes, who has received numerous awards for her work, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben award, and a finalist award for the Post in 2022, announced her resignation on Friday, citing the Post’s refusal to publish her cartoon and her disagreement with the newspaper’s editorial decisions.