Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnes on Friday night depicted the paper's owner Jeff Bezos nudging a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump. He announced that he was resigning after his cartoons were rejected by the newspaper's opinion column. .
Ternes, who has worked at the Post since 2008, said in a short statement posted on Substack that the paper's decision to retire his cartoons was a “game changer” that was “dangerous to freedom of the press.” said.
“In all my life, comics have never been killed because of who or what I aimed my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.”
Telnaes included a draft of the comic in his Substack post. In addition to Amazon founder Bezos, the cartoon also featured Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times. Mickey Mouse is the mascot of the Walt Disney Company.
The Post's opinion editor, David Shipley, said in a statement that while he respects Ms. Ternas and everything she has given the Post, he “disagrees with her version of events.” Ta.
“Not all editorial decisions reflect malicious forces,” Shipley said in a statement. “My decision was dictated by the fact that I had just published a column on the same theme as the cartoon and had already planned to publish another column (this one satire). The only prejudice was against repetition .”
Shipley added that he spoke with Ternes by phone on Friday and asked him to reconsider his resignation. In the call, Mr. Shipley said he hoped to speak with Mr. Ternes on Monday after thinking it over over the weekend. He then advised her to hold off on quitting to see if the situation could be resolved according to her principles.
Ternes did not respond to requests for comment.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Politico cartoonist Matt Walker called the decision to kill Mr. Telnas' cartoon “chilling” and noted that the Post's prominent cartoonist Herbert Bloch, known as Herblock, “They were spinning, kicking and screaming in their graves,” said former Post editor Ben Bradlee.
