(Washington) Press cartoonist Ann Telnaes announced that she had resigned from Washington Postdue to management’s rejection of a caricature in which it criticized the daily’s owner, Jeff Bezos, for seeking to “curry favors with Donald Trump”.
The drawing, published Friday on the designer’s blog, shows the founder of Amazon on his knees handing a bag bearing the dollar sign to a statue representing the future American president.
In mid-December, Amazon donated $1 million to the organization fund for Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. And Jeff Bezos recently made a trip to Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of the president-elect who promised to “restore” the media with legal action.
Designer for the Washington Post since 2008 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for press cartoons, Ann Telnaes explains in an article on her blog that she “never had a drawing rejected” because of the subject she had chosen to depict, “until now”.
“The drawing that was suppressed criticizes the tech and media bosses and billionaires who do everything to curry favor with the president-elect,” she explains.
In the drawing, Jeff Bezos is alongside Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; the boss of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, Sam Altman; and the owner of the Los Angeles TimesPatrick Soon-Shiong.
A little further on, a prostrate Mickey Mouse represents the Walt Disney Company, itself owner of ABC News.
The channel had agreed to pay $15 million to end a defamation proceeding brought by Donald Trump.
Even before beginning his second term, the Republican signaled his intention to launch an avalanche of complaints against the media, which he calls “the enemies of the people.”
Many lawyers believe that many procedures will not succeed, but that they risk creating an effect of intimidation and potential self-censorship.
Requested by the AFP, the Washington Post contested Ann Telnaes’ version.
Saying that he respected the cartoonist and all her contribution to the daily newspaper, the head of the editorial pages David Shipley affirmed that his decision to reject the drawing had been “guided by the fact that we had just published an editorial on the same subject” and that another, satirical, was already planned.
“The only bias was to oppose the repetition,” he said.
Jeff Bezos, who during Donald Trump’s first term opposed the Republican on defense contracts, had prevented the Washington Post before the November election to call for votes for Kamala Harris, while voting recommendations by editorial boards are a tradition in the United States.
His space company Blue Origin is also engaged in a race with Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to win public contracts.
