"Washington Post" employee resigns after cartoon is rejected

t-online "Washington Post" employee resigns after cartoon is rejected Thomas Wanhoff • 1 hour • 3 minutes reading time Criticism of Trump's proximity Bezos' newspaper rejects cartoon: employee resigns Jeff Bezos: The entrepreneur bought the "Washington Post" in 2013. A cartoon has led to a resignation from the "Washington Post". The artist speaks of a threat to the free press. A long-time employee of the "Washington Post" has resigned because one of her cartoons was rejected. "In all this time, a cartoon has never been rejected because I pointed 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 have spoken out in favor of the designated US President 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 editorial decision-makers. But that was not the case here. It was about her point of view. "This is a game changer," wrote the 64-year-old, "and dangerous for the free press." Telnaes also addressed the fact that she works for a company and that the company can demand that employees work for the good of the company. "That's true, but we are talking about news organizations that have public obligations and that are obliged to maintain a free press in a democracy," she argues. "As a cartoonist, it is my job to hold powerful people and institutions accountable." Won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 The cartoonist won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for one of her cartoons, 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 for political reasons. In October, three members of the editorial board resigned because owner Jeff Bezos had decided that the newspaper would not support one of the candidates in the presidential election campaign. Previously, there had been an internal draft that was supposed to support Kamala Harris. As a result, 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 one million US dollars to the celebration of Donald Trump's inauguration. Bezos had even announced that his company Amazon wanted to broadcast the celebration live. The political influence of tech entrepreneurs has also led to a resignation from a media company in Germany. After Elon Musk wrote an opinion piece in the "Welt", Eva Marie Kogel, the head of the opinion department of "Welt" and "WamS", posted on X that she had "submitted my resignation after pressure" as a consequence of Musk's text. Other Welt journalists also publicly shared their displeasure on X.