The Washington Post’s opinion part rejected a comic featuring Post proprietor and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos genuflecting toward a monument of President-elect Trump, according to Ann Telnaes, who won the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning.
In a short speech posted to Substack, Telnaes- who has worked at the Post since 2008- called the publication’s decision to kill her film a “game changer” that was “dangerous for a complimentary press”.
She wrote,” In all that time, I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I aimed my pen at.” ” Until today”.
Telnaes published a document of her animation in her Substack post. In addition to Bezos, the film depicted Meta’s chairman, Mark Zuckerberg, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, and Mickey Mouse, the commercial symbol of The Walt Disney.
David Shipley, the Post’s director of ideas, said in a speech that he admired Telnaes and all that she had said to the Post, but that he “must agree with her interpretation of events.”
” No every editorial view is a reflection of a malevolent push”, Shipley said in the speech. We had just published a row on the same subject as the animation, and we had already scheduled a second row, this one satirical, for publication, so I made my decision. The only discrimination was against repeat”. nyt
