A cartoonist resigned from her job at The Washington Post after an editor rejected her cartoon featuring Jeff Bezos, owner of the newspaper and founder of Amazon, and other media executives bowing down to President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message on Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she had drawn a cartoon showing a group of media executives, including Bezos, bowing down to Trump while offering him bags of money.
Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize "the billionaire tech and media bosses who have been doing everything possible to curry favor with incoming President Trump."
Several executives, including Bezos, have been seen at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Telnaes accused them of having lucrative government contracts and of working towards the elimination of regulations.
Telnaes pointed out that never before had one of her cartoons been rejected due to its inherent message and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.
"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable," Telnaes wrote.
"For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical work. That's why I've decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much stir and will be dismissed because I'm just a cartoonist. But I will not stop defending the truth to power through my cartoons, because as they say, 'democracy dies in darkness'."
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement this Saturday accusing The Post of "political cowardice" and calling on other cartoonists to publish Telnaes' cartoon with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.
"The tyranny ends at the tip of the pencil," said the Association. "It thrives in darkness, and The Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a dazed boxer."
The communications director of The Post, Liza Pluto, provided a statement from David Shipley, the editor of the newspaper's editorial page, to The Associated Press.
Shipley stated in the press release that he does not agree with Telnae's "interpretation of the events" and added that he decided to remove the cartoon because the newspaper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was about to publish another one.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of an evil force... The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley reiterated.