A cartoonist has determined to go away her job on the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s proprietor and different media executives kowtowing to President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message On Friday on the web platform Substack he mentioned he had drawn a cartoon exhibiting a gaggle of media executives bowing to Trump whereas providing him luggage of cash, together with Post proprietor and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was supposed to criticize “billionaire tech and media CEOs who’ve executed their greatest to curry favor with President-elect Trump.” Several executives, together with Bezos, had been noticed at Trump’s Florida membership, Mar-a-Lago. He accused them of getting profitable authorities contracts and dealing to get rid of laws.
Telnaes mentioned he has by no means seen a cartoon rejected due to its inherent message earlier than and that such a transfer is harmful for a free press.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to carry highly effective folks and establishments accountable,” Telnaes wrote. “For the primary time, my editor stopped me from doing that very important work. So I made a decision to go away the Post. I doubt my determination will trigger a lot of a stir and that will probably be rejected as a result of I’m only a cartoonist. But I cannot cease supporting fact to energy by my cartoons, as a result of as they are saying “democracy dies in darkness”.
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists launched a press release Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking different cartoonists to submit Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in solidarity.
“Tyranny ends with the pen,” the affiliation mentioned. “It thrives in obscurity, and the Washington Post merely closed its eyes and gave up like a drunken boxer.”
The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, offered The Associated Press on Saturday with a press release from David Shipley, the paper’s editorial web page editor. Shipley mentioned within the assertion that he disagreed with Telnaes’ “interpretation of occasions.”
He mentioned he determined to reject the cartoon as a result of the newspaper had simply revealed a column on the identical subject because the cartoon and was able to publish one other.
“Not all editorial judgments are a mirrored image of an evil drive. … The solely bias was in opposition to repetition,” Shipley mentioned.
Originally revealed:
