Jeff Bezos spikes editorial cartoon, proving cartoon correct
By 
Ann Telnaes is resigning from the Washington Post:
I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.
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. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.
While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.
[…]
As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. 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 Times story about the resignation is an object illustration of how editors working toward Bezos and the Murdoch crony he installed have to humiliate themselves:
David Shipley, The Post’s opinions editor, said in a statement that he respected Ms. Telnaes and all she had given to The Post “but must disagree with her interpretation of events.”
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Mr. Shipley said in the statement. “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.”
Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.
Yeah, sure, it is highly unusual for an editorial cartoonist to comment on a story that is already in the news! We need to return to the old days in which editorial cartoons focused solely on stories nobody was talking about!
When Bezos intervened to spike the Post’s endorsement of Harris, there was a lot of clueless would-be Savvy commentary that focused on the relevance of the endorsement per se — which is indeed not very important — rather than the actual story, namely what it said about how Bezos would run the paper going forward. If you considered this an open question, you have your answer.