Criticism of being close to Trump
Bezos’ newspaper rejects cartoon: employee quits
Updated on 04/01/2025 – 09:36 amReading time: 2 minutes
A cartoon led to his resignation from the Washington Post. The artist speaks of a danger to the free press.
A long-time employee of The Washington Post has resigned because a cartoon of hers was rejected. “In all this time, a cartoon has never been rejected because I aimed my pen at certain people or topics. Until now,” wrote Ann Telnaes, who has worked at the US newspaper since 2008, on the Substack platform.
The cartoon was about criticism of tech billionaires and media bosses who spoke out in favor of US President-elect Donald Trump. “The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta Founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times Publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News and Jeff Bezos.” The latter is not only the founder of Amazon, but also the owner of the Washington Post.
It is common for drafts to be rejected if they are unclear to the editorial decision-makers. But that wasn’t the case here. It was about her view of things. “This is a game changer,” wrote the 64-year-old, “and dangerous for the free press.”
Telnaes also pointed out that she worked for a company and that the company could require employees to work for the benefit of the company. “That’s true, but we’re talking about news organizations that have public responsibilities and that have an obligation to maintain a free press in a democracy,” she argues. “As a cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable.”
The cartoonist won the Pulitzer Prize for one of her cartoons in 2001 and was a finalist in 2022. She is a member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and has also published several books.
Telnaes is not the first to resign from the Washington Post because of political reasons. In October, three members of the editorial board resigned because owner Jeff Bezos decided that the newspaper would not support one of the candidates in the presidential election campaign. There had previously been an internal draft that was supposed to support Kamala Harris. As a consequence, there was a wave of subscription cancellations. Bezos, Meta boss Zuckerberg, Open AI founder Sam Altman and most recently Apple boss Tim Cook had agreed to donate a sum of one million US dollars to the celebration of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Bezos even announced that his Amazon company wanted to broadcast the celebration live.
The political influence of tech entrepreneurs has also led to the termination of a media company in Germany. After Elon Musk wrote an opinion article in “Welt”, Eva Marie Kogel, the head of the opinion department for “Welt” and “WamS”, posted on Other world journalists also shared their displeasure publicly on X.
