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Well, a great cartoonist would have adjusted the cartoon as to trick the editors into running it, while still sending the cartoonist’s intended message differently
Honestly, I think we should moderate posts like these. I feel like they‘re propaganda
Well, it’s a statement by the person who concerns it, you can hardly call that propaganda. But of course that she resigned is an act of political activism, the aim of this piece is to invoke a political reaction and protest. It is not neutral or objective. But since it is from the person themselves I think it is interesting to read and to discuss, it invoked a strong reaction on you! lol Anyway I guess we can look forward to a year where we will see a lot of polarization and (big)tech becoming an important political factor. But maybe it’s an idea to introduce a vote down button?
Yeah, but for example Tagesschau prominently featured this story. I agree that there is a real person involved here etc, but this story is purposefully used to discredit tech people and I don‘t like this. At the end of the day, what do we know of the Washington Post‘s leadership? What if they are anti their boss? If they conspired, they sure did hell of a job ruining his image
Ann Telnaes is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and had her cartoon rejected for the first time in 15 years specifically due to its targets, not its clarity. The core issue here is about press freedom and editorial independence, not about discrediting any particular group like tech people I think. Also reading the Tagesschau article https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/amerika/karikatur-trump-bezos-100.html it seems quite neutral to me. The suggestion that this could be some kind of orchestrated campaign against tech figures or internal conspiracy lacks supporting evidence and contradicts the documented history and context provided. But yes true, we also don’t know anything about the Washington Posts leadership. We only know about Jef Bezos defending the decision to stop making presidential endorsements. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/28/post-editorial-board-resignations Also as I understand there is a conflict about the interpretation of events “Not every editorial judgement is a reflection of a malign force. ... The only bias was against repetition,” as the Washington Post defends the decision. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2025/01/04/washington-post-trump-bezos-cartoonist-resigns/52d8560e-caeb-11ef-a9b8-74e0b395057f_story.html I think Ann Telnaes might have been frustrated about Jef Bezos ownership of the Post for a long time, and she saw this as an opportunity to make the move. Of course this is all speculation.
Not a free press issue. Free press is a subject arising between the press itself and the state. In this story the state is not even involved. It's just the news paper owner against his employees. Name one company where you can just go and insult or caricature the boss in a bad way by properly dissenting. Also, what about other news publishers? The "dissenting" views of state-owned media are always carefully curated. Usually if the Tagesschau, ARD, etc. write something about people in power then, I'm sure, that's debated internally and editorialized before it goes out. They'd obviously not undermine their own team. Or, when are the NYT owners being caricatured or criticized in their own paper (in a bad way)? The WP is Jeff Bezos' news paper since a decade. If I was to take a job at Meta, Tesla etc., I'd make up my mind BEFORE whether I wanted to work for someone like Musk or Zuckerberg. I find it hard to believe that someone ends up randomly working at the WP with Bezos being the owner for a decade, and then suddenly they quit over an argument, or they somehow have this internal heureka moment like "wow, I actually just realized that I don't like our boss, I should really quit now and make a fuzz about it." > Also reading the Tagesschau article it seems quite neutral to me. (tangential to the rest of the conversation. If you don't care about Tagesschau, you can skip this part) Tagesschau has been on a roll critizing tech people since Elon Musk has endorsed the AFD. They have lashed onto every possibility to discredit American tech. I don't think this is right from a national interest point of view as these US tech people are in power now and since I think we should present as allies, not antagonists. I also think that politics wise, the German politicans are just plain wrong here. They've accumulated so many mistakes. It's time for them to be quiet. If you read Musk's statement (https://archive.ph/yOujc) on what political change he wants to see in the EU/Germany, it's reasonable. I have yet to see a single German establishment politician make concessions towards the demands. A few examples: - too much bureaucracy in Germany, needs to be cleaned up - national identity and migration: German migration happened in humanitarian spirit, but integration proves to be tricky. AFD wants to preserve German national identity and culture - pragmatic view on energy dependency. E.g. renewables alone will most likely not work in Europa. This has been discussed ad nauseam. A radical-green exit from Nuclear seems unwise. - Political realism: We just had Analena Baerbock go to Syria and "wow, shock, the Muslim leader of the country didn't want to give a woman his hand!" To me, this is German ideological warfare, a practice in which I think my country shouldn't engage in. We have a constitution that gives our politicians a mandate to preserve civil rights in Germany. Not Syria, so Elon is right, this is not realistic. The truth is that the establishment parties have fucked this country up every since I was allowed to vote. They have fared miserably and they deserve to lose power. It's sad that this benefits the AFD. There have been many attempts at creating other, more left leaning parties before like the Piratenpartei or Volt. But that's not working. Tagesschau is a marionette of those currently in power. The fact that they've picked up this meaningless story and featured it prominently to swing sentiment is all that you need to know.
Regarding the "not a free press issue" argument, I think this might oversimplify the situation because the Washington Post, like other major news organizations, has specific public trust obligations that differentiate it from regular companies. I think free press is not necessarily only a subject arising between the press itself and the state, there is also a tension between corporate interests and press independence. This isn't simply about an employee wanting to criticize their boss - it's about maintaining editorial independence in an institution that serves a crucial democratic function. But I agree, since Jef Bezos has been the owner of the Post for 12 years, Ann Telnaes could have quit long ago. I’m guessing this surely might have something to do, as you also argue, with a recent negative political vibe against the so-called billionaire tech leaders. And in regard to objectiveness of the free press you could also argue not endorsing presidential candidates, as Jef Bezos pressed for, is a good thing. Donald Trump being the elephant in the room. As I mentioned earlier, I think we currently are experiencing huge polarization in the Western world, we probably can’t expect honest takes from both sides of the spectrum (and worse probably). Regarding the German press, I don’t know a lot about those actually, I sometimes read Zeit - also I have superficial knowledge of German politics, just the main things, parties and issues. But it seems Germany is indeed not looking well economically in the near future. Just read this article about it: > The German economy is shrinking, factories are closing. The German 'self-image' is not sustainable. Germany suddenly turns out to be the old man of Europe. Digitalization lags behind, the infrastructure is outdated, and China undermines the German industrial base. "This is an existential threat." https://translate.kagi.com/https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/01/03/de-duitse-economie-krimpt-fabrieken-sluiten-het-duitse-zelfbeeld-is-niet-houdbaar-zegt-econoom-tordoir-a4878331
This sketch seems pretty normal to me, we have much rougher political pictures in our newspapers. On the other hand, I understand why WaPo would reject that. I don't read it so the main question is - has there been other cartoons making fun of Big Tech corps bowing to Biden to get favors? If yes, then this rejection could be considered a political or "we don't want to choose sides" statement. But if not, then just publishing the Trump cartoon is far from "being objective" and "fighting for a free press", it's just a cheap dunk by someone who calls their new president an "autocrat-in-waiting".
> WaPo Fun fact, in German WaPo is short for WasserPolizei or Water Police