Washington Post cartoonist quits after sketch of Bezos bowing to Donald Trump rejected

People walk by the One Franklin Square Building, home of The Washington Post. Picture: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

A cartoonist has quit her job at the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.

Ann Telnaes posted a message on Friday on the online platform Substack saying she drew the cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Mr Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Ms Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticise “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favour with incoming President-elect Trump”.

Several executives, Mr Bezos among them, have been spotted at Mr Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago.

She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.

Ms Telnaes said she has never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging 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,” Ms Telnaes wrote.

“For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”

The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement on Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Ms Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.

“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said.

“It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”

The Post’s communications director Liza Pluto provided with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor, in which he said he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”

He said he decided to drop the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.

“Not every editorial judgement is a reflection of a malign force… The only bias was against repetition,” Mr Shipley said.