Washington Post Editorial Cartoonist Quits After Bezos Cartoon Is Killed

• Ann Telnaes, a longtime Washington Post cartoonist, has announced she is quitting her position.
• She said the move came after a cartoon featuring the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, was rejected.
• “I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now,” she said.

Ann Telnaes, an editorial cartoonist who has worked for The Washington Post since 2008, announced she was quitting her position after one of her cartoons was rejected.

The cartoon in question depicted Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaires kneeling in front of a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

In a Substack post, Telnaes wrote that the idea behind the cartoon was to criticize billionaire tech and media chief executives she said “have been doing their best to curry favor” with Trump.

Alongside Bezos, the cartoon shows Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Walt Disney mascot Mickey Mouse.

“I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now,” Telnaes wrote, adding that the paper’s decision to kill the cartoon was “a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.”

“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” she continued. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post.”

Jeff Stein, a White House economics reporter at the Post, reshared the cartoon and a link to Telnaes’ Substack post on X.

The Post’s opinions editor, David Shipley, said in a statement to The New York Times that while he respected Telnaes and her work for the publication, he “must disagree with her interpretation of events.”

“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” he said. “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 — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”

Telnaes, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 2001, has long been an advocate for free speech and editorial cartoons as a tool for civic debate.

She serves on the advisory board for the Geneva-based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and was formerly a board member of Cartoonists Rights.

Telnaes concluded her Substack post by quoting the Post’s slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Jeff Bezos has owned The Washington Post since 2013, when his holding company, Nash Holdings, bought the newspaper for $250 million.

Business Insider has contacted Telnaes, Shipley, and The Washington Post for comment.