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WaPo Kills Cartoon That Mocked the Boss—and Trump Pete Tucker ([link removed])


Rough draft of Anne Telnaes cartoon showing Jeff Bezos and other billionaires paying homage to Trump.

The cartoon that was rejected by the Washington Post, definitely not because it portrayed Post owner Jeff Bezos in an unflattering light.

When Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post cartoonist, submitted a draft sketch shortly before Christmas ([link removed]) , she must have known she was stirring the pot.

But after watching a parade of Big Tech CEOs jet down to Mar-a-Lago to pay homage—and millions of dollars—to Trump, a cartoon depicting these groveling billionaires must have seemed natural, even if it included her own boss, Jeff Bezos ([link removed]) , the founder of Amazon and owner of the Post since 2013.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump,” Telnaes wrote in a Substack post (1/3/25 ([link removed]) ) announcing her resignation from the Post, where she’s worked since 2008. “I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

Telnaes’ post went further, criticizing media owners like Bezos for abandoning their responsibility to safeguard the free press “to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting.”

In addition to Bezos, the other billionaires Telnaes depicted bowing before Trump were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong ([link removed]) .

And lying prostrate beneath these men was Mickey Mouse, Telnaes’ apparent nod to the cowardly $16 million settlement Disney-owned ABC recently offered Trump (FAIR.org, 12/16/24 ([link removed]) ).


** 'Bias against repetition'
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Cartoon depicting the H-1B visa issue putting the first cracks into "MAGA World"

Somehow the Washington Post running a column by Adam Lashinsky (12/30/24 ([link removed]) ) about MAGA's internecine battles over H-1B visas didn't prevent it from publishing a cartoon on the same theme the next day (12/31/24 ([link removed]) )—or another one the next week (1/4/25 ([link removed]) ).

The unenviable job of ensuring a thin-skinned ([link removed]) Bezos wasn’t embarrassed by a cartoon in his own newspaper fell to Post opinions editor David Shipley ([link removed]) . “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Shipley said in a statement ([link removed]) justifying his killing of Telnaes’ cartoon:

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.

It's bizarre to argue that a regular cartoonist's work should be killed because the paper published a column—or even two!—with similar content. Even so, we can only find one recent Post opinion column addressing Bezos' efforts to curry favor with the president-elect (12/18/24 ([link removed]) ).

What’s more, a search of the Post’s “latest cartoons” shows the paper has no problem publishing cartoons on the same topic as opinion pieces. Recent examples include Republicans’ difficulties finding a speaker (1/2/25 ([link removed]) , 1/4/25 ([link removed]) ), Republican infighting over H-1B visas (12/30/24 ([link removed]) , 12/31/24 ([link removed]) , 1/4/25 ([link removed]) ) and controversy over Biden’s death penalty commutations (12/23/24 ([link removed]) , 12/26/24
([link removed]) ).

Outside of opinions, the Post has run a few recent stories on the efforts of Big Tech executives, including Bezos, to mollify Trump (12/13/24 ([link removed]) , 12/19/24 ([link removed]) , 12/31/24 ([link removed]) ).

Aside from repetitiveness, deputy opinions editor David Von Drehle ([link removed]) offered another reason for spiking Telnaes’ cartoon. “I didn’t think it was a very good cartoon. It seemed pretty ham-handed to me,” Von Drehle told Post media critic Erik Wemple ([link removed]) (1/6/25 ([link removed]) ).

Wemple’s blog post also disclosed that Post executive editor Matt Murray wants the paper to stop covering its own problems. "I did set a policy that broadly we should not cover ourselves,” said Murray, who claimed his change was made weeks ago and wasn’t “specifically tied to the cartoon.”

Von Drehle’s denigrating comment about Telnaes’ cartoon only appeared in Wemple’s blog, not in a Post news story. In fact, amid the swirling controversy, the Post hasn’t written a single original news story on the spiked cartoon, only running an AP story (1/4/25 ([link removed]) ) on the topic.


** Exodus of talent
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WaPo: The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media

"It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility," wrote Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (10/28/24 ([link removed]) ) in a column that did just that.

Following the rejection of her cartoon, Telnaes resigned, marking just the latest departure from the storied paper.

“The Post is shedding talent at an unprecedented rate,” observed media journalist Oliver Darcy (Status,1/6/25 ([link removed]) ), who earlier noted (1/2/25 ([link removed]) ): “Eventually treating employees with little respect has consequences.”

The growing exodus ([link removed]) comes in the wake of Bezos spiking the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in late October—a move he took to curry favor with Trump (FAIR.org, 10/30/24 ([link removed]) ).

Amid the ensuing backlash—in which 300,000 Post readers reportedly canceled their subscriptions ([link removed]) —Bezos scapegoated Post reporters for his craven action, claiming their untrustworthiness had forced him to abandon the paper’s longstanding practice of issuing presidential endorsements. “The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media,” was the headline accompanying Bezos’ self-serving op-ed (Washington Post, 10/28/24 ([link removed]) ).


** Ingratiation ratcheted up
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NYT: Jeff Bezos is optimistic about working with a ‘calmer’ Trump

Jeff Bezos (Washington Post, 12/4/24 ([link removed]) ) said he hopes to persuade Donald Trump that the press is “not the enemy”—in part by giving him a $1 million donation ([link removed]) .

After Trump’s win, Bezos ratched up his ingratiation, saying Trump has “grown in the past eight years” and is now “calmer.” Bezos also told the New York Times’ Dealbook conference he’s “very optimistic” about Trump’s second term, and hopes to work with him (Washington Post, 12/4/24 ([link removed]) ).

“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him,” Bezos said. “We do have too much regulation in this country.”

Bezos also trekked down to Mar-a-Lago, gifts in hand—just as Telnaes depicted. In addition to ponying up $1 million for Trump’s inauguration fund, Amazon is also broadcasting the inauguration live on Amazon Prime, an in-kind donation worth another $1 million (BBC, 1/4/25 ([link removed]) ). Meanwhile, Amazon will release a new documentary ([link removed]) on Melania Trump, who’s an executive producer of the film; Bezos' company reportedly paid $40 million for the rights (Puck, 1/7/25 ([link removed]) ).

Bezos didn’t become the second-richest person alive by prioritizing civic responsibility. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, told the Post (10/30/24 ([link removed]) ). “It’s business, period. That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”

Meanwhile at the Post, the paper today “started laying off roughly 4% of its work force” (New York Times, 1/7/25 ([link removed]) ).
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ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
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