Cartoonish is the Polite Word
On Friday, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post -- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ann Telnaes quit her position when the opinions editor of the paper rejected her cartoon. Telnaes has been with the Post since 2008. And “In all that time," she wrote, I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
Telnaes posted a draft of her cartoon in her Substack article that discussed the situation. The cartoon depicted a range of billionaires bowing at the statue of Trump. The group included Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post (and founder of Amazon). Others shown were Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO; Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, for The Walt Disney Co.
The cartoonist said the decision was to block her work was a “game changer" that was “dangerous for a free press.” You can read her full article here.
The Post’s opinions editor, David Shipley, released a statement that said he respected Telnaes “but must disagree with her interpretation of events.”
What Shipley gave as he apparent reason was that “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. 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.”
The explanation strikes me as utterly disingenuous, bordering on the tipping edge of ridiculous lying. It suggests that if there’s a major news story, the Washington Post will only cover it to a limited degree, and only post a couple of articles on it during a week. On its face, that’s laughable. A major story might get a half-dozen articles about it in a single edition of the paper. And more articles every day as long as it’s a story.
“Sorry, we published a story on the presidential race last Monday and had another on Wednesday, we can’t have another this week.”
“While we appreciate your editorial cartoon about the bombing in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve, we already had an opinion column on it, so we’re done with any further commentary about the event.”
“Yes, we understand your work is a cartoon commenting on the Gaza-Israeli fighting, and the two op-eds we published about it this week were text, but we’re trying to avoid repetition in our coverage.”
This, of course, isn’t the first conflict that the Post has had in its editorial dealings with Trump since the election. Owner Bezos blocked the newspaper endorsing Kamala Harris. And not only created great outrage, but lost many subscribers. One would think the paper would be even more sensitive to how they handled the perception they are creating in their editorial judgement.
And, of course, the irony of this all is that the Post editors confirmed the very point of the cartoon by their actions killing it.
James Carville appeared on Jen Psaki’s show on MSNBC yesterday. He was appropriately scathing in his reaction to the Washington Post’s action.
“Let's be very forceful and let's be very upfront here,” he said, “...the billionaire class in this country has exercised such power that they got rid of the cartoonists at the Washington Post, okay? They are having editorial sway over a cartoon that runs. I grew up with Conrad, Herblock, studied Thomas Nast. What David Shipley, what happened under his watch is a disgrace to journalism in America, I don't know how that guy could possibly get up in the morning."
Here are five-minutes of Carville's appearance, which includes comments on other subjects, as well.
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