A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of the paper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n
Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Ms Telnaes announced her resignation in a Substack post Friday: “In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In the cartoon, Mr Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are depicted on their knees giving bags of cash to a statue of Trump.<\/p>\n
Mickey Mouse is also depicted prostrate in the cartoon. ABC News \u2013 which is owned by Disney \u2013 last month agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.<\/p>\n
“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,” Ms Telnaes wrote in her resignation announcement.<\/p>\n
She said the cartoon was satirising “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations”.<\/p>\n
Ms Telnaes said the Washington Post’s refusal to run the cartoon was a “game changer” and described it as “dangerous for a free press”.<\/p>\n
But Mr Shipley told the BBC his decision not to publish the cartoon was because of repetition of another piece set to publish.<\/p>\n
“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 judgment is a reflection of a malign force.”<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 this one a satire \u2013 for publication.”<\/p>\n
Last month, Mr Bezos announced Amazon would donate $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund and make a $1m in-kind contribution.<\/p>\n
Mr 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.<\/p>\n
The newspaper faced a liberal backlash weeks before the November presidential election after Mr Bezos interceded to prevent the editorial board endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n
Mr Bezos defended the move, but the newspaper reported it lost more than 250,000 subscribers following the decision.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Times, whose 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.<\/p>\n
By BBC News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of the paper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos. Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. Ms Telnaes announced her resignation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":288310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49426],"tags":[191587,23589,191586],"class_list":{"0":"post-288309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-worldnews","8":"tag-ann-telnaes","9":"tag-jeff-bezos","10":"tag-washington-post"},"yoast_head":"\n