Democracy dies in cowardice. Another step downwards for journalism and a leap into the sewer for the Washington Post. It boggles my mind. This is one of those moments where age renders one a necessary perspective. I was in college during Watergate. I well remember the intrepid journalistic duo of Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein bringing down a corrupt president. At the time Woodward mused, “There are countries where this couldn’t have happened. If we tried to report this in some places, we’d be lying in an alley with our legs broken.”
I was proud to be studying journalism and media in the 70’s. I felt it to be an honorable endeavor. God knows the competition for jobs was intense, so I wasn’t the only one enamored of the field(s.) The Washington Post had also published the Pentagon Papers three years prior to the Watergate expose so it was the gold standard in journalism, winner of many Pulitzers.
I weep to see what the Washington Post has become since my college years. I’m sure that Bob Woodlward is gritting his teeth at the very least. That’s because of the latest Bezos-fueled plummet into another cultural sub-basement, provoking the resignation of Ann Telnaes. The Pulitizer Prize winning cartoonist resigned Friday after her cartoon was “spiked.” This is a journalism term of art, defined thusly: “Spiking, in journalism, is the act of withholding a story from publication for editorial, commercial, or political reasons.” The cartoon shows Bezos and other billionaires supplicating Trump and evidently the truth hurts, because WaPo spiked it into oblivion. Where it did not stay long.
We began 2025 pretty much the way the late, lamented year ended: With yet another embarrassing case of premature capitulation. Yet somehow the Washington Post managed to combine cowardice, self-sabotage, and ghastly timing in one tidy bundle of cravenness. And it cost them its Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
We’ve come a helluva long way from “Democracy dies in darkness” to this moment of journalistic cringe.
Lest you missed this story: Cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned from the Post Friday after editors spiked a cartoon depicting billionaire media moguls — including Post owner Jeff Bezos — genuflecting before Donald Trump as they offered him cash.
Alongside Bezos, the censored cartoon featured Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman offering Trump sacks of tribute. Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is offering a tube of lipstick, while Mickey Mouse — representing Disney/ABC — lies prostrate before the Trumpian colossus.2
But, of course, it was the image of Bezos — who dined with Trump and Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago — that triggered Wapo’s Profile in Uncourage at an especially inopportune moment: The Post is still reeling from the massive loss of subscribers after Bezos killed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, and the paper is in the process of hemorrhaging star journalists, who are fleeing from the Bezos-induced implosion of the storied institution.
Now, as a result of the decision to spike the cartoon, the Post once again looks weak and compromised, at the same time that it has managed to attract far, far, far more attention to the cartoon than it would otherwise have gotten.
David Shipley, who has the deep misfortune of being the editorial page editor of Bezos’s paper, is anxiously denying that the decision to kill the cartoon was “a reflection of a malign force.” Rather, he insists, his attempt to euthanize the image “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 lies aren’t even any good these days. Maybe that’s because the people telling them don’t really have their heart in them. You can’t have it both ways. Either a news organization is free to report the news, satirize the news, speak truth to power — or a news organization, because of who owns it, must toe the line and make sure that the owners’ heroes (or at the very least, people it can profit from) do not become offended. And the Washington Post has picked its side. Again, I weep to see this.
There will be people who say, “Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company”. That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that 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.”4
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Exit take: To fully absorb the profound stupidity of the Wapo’s decision, consider the alternative timeline in which the paper published Telnaes’s sketch. If the Wapo had published it, both the paper and Bezos would have looked… better. The paper would have reasserted a modicum of independence and integrity; and even Bezos would have benefited.
Instead of looking like a thin-skinned, craven autocrat, he would have looked like someone big enough to tolerate criticism.
Instead, he told us — again — who he really is.
Charlie Sykes ends his screed with the comment, “The Contrary [name of his newsletter] will not back down.” Good for it. Nor will PolitiZoom. We may be a fly speck in cyberspace but we’ll continue to tell the truth.
And make no mistake, this is the era of the independent journalist. The already established people in that field, Charlie Sykes, (and the entire Bulwark) Judd Legum, Josh Marshall, Aaron Rupar and many others are proving that — as is Meidas News, Lincoln Project, and any left-wing blog you can think of. It’s up to us to speak truth to power because the once-giants of this industry, ABC News, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, have all been bought out and they’re capitulating and cowering.
I never thought I would live to see this day. But here it is. The major organs of journalism are owned by autocrats, not journalists. This is why there is going to be a massive shift in the journalism field. Either journalism as an industry, as a human endeavor, will configure itself in such a way that it can continue to do the job it was designed to do, or it’s Orwellian memory hole time.
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RIP
You’d think Bezos and the other rich assholes pushing us into an American version of Putin’s playground…would remember what happens to rich assholes once the dictator is done with you. Or, someone may snap, walk up behind you as you are headed somewhere, and decide you need to be removed from planet earth. There are consequences…sooner or later they may land on you. Journalism? That ended long ago. The LAW ended it. Good job boys.
I’d love to know far more about the exact contents of the “column on the same topic as the cartoon” (if a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then I’m guessing the column runs at least 5000 words) and the contents of the “already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication” (mainly how much more satirical can this second column be compared to the pretty accurate imagery of the cartoon as the nature of the cartoon was doing some major lampooning* on the subject).
If the editor is REALLY so concerned about “repetition,” then why schedule the “satire” column so quickly?
(*”Lampoon” literally means “to criticize by using ridicule, sarcasm or irony.” And “satire” means “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticize someone–particularly their stupidity or vices.”)