A cartoonist from The Washington Post resigned after a drawing criticizing American billionaire Jeff Bezos, reported Agence France-Presse, quoted by dariknews.bg.
Ann Telnaes announced that she resigned because the management of the publicationrejected her cartoon in which she criticized Bezos, who owns the "Washington Post", for trying to win the favor of Donald Trump.
The drawing, published on Friday on the cartoonist's blog, shows the founder of "Amazon" kneeling and reaching for a statue of the future president of the United States, holding a sack with dollars.
A cartoonist for the "Washington Post" since 2008 and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Anne Telnaes explains in a blog post that she has never had a drawing of hers rejected because of a story she chose to draw.
"The drawing that was rejected criticizes the bosses and the tech and media moguls who are doing everything to curry favor with the president-elect," Anne said.
The rejected drawing shows Bezos next to "Meta" CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the head of the generative artificial intelligence company "OpenAI" Sam Altman and the owner of the "Los Angeles Times" Patrick Soon-Shiong. A little further away in the drawing, Mickey Mouse is seen as a representative of the "Walt Disney" company, which owns the "ABC News" media outlet. This media outlet had agreed to pay $15 million to end Trump's defamation lawsuit against it.
In mid-December, Bezos's "Amazon" made a donation of $1 million to the organization responsible for Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony on January 20. Jeff Bezos recently visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
In response to Agence France-Presse, The Washington Post disputed Anne Telnaes' version. David Shipley, the paper's editorial editor, said he respected the cartoonist's work and added that the paper had decided to reject her cartoon because it had previously published an editorial on the same topic that had been planned for a long time and that another article, in a satirical vein, was also in preparation. The rejection of the drawing was aimed at avoiding the repetition of several publications on the same topic, he said.
Jeff Bezos opposed the Republican during Trump's first term on defense contracts. Before the November elections, he prevented the "Washington Post" from recommending a vote in favor of Democrat Kamala Harris. Such a recommendation by the publication's editorial board was a tradition in the United States.
Bezos' company "Blue Origin" is also engaged in a competition with Elon Musk's company "SpaceX" to win public procurement tenders.