Ann Telnaes, The Washington Post, and The Streisand Effect
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When colleague Mike Peterson said “it is all over the Internet” regarding the Ann Telnaes-Washington Post news, we didn’t realize that that was understatement. Every newspaper and news website worth their salt has reported on The Post’s refusal to publish the Telnaes cartoon.
Go to the news search engines and enter Ann Telnaes and see hundreds of results whether it is Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo. Thousands of stories from United States sources and internationally are available. And political websites from the far left (“self-serving plutocrats”) to the far right (“Leftist Washington Post editorial cartoonist”), and everyone in between. Check out the posts on social media: Facebook, Bluesky, X/Twitter (I don’t have a Truth Social account or link). The term “going viral” seems very inadequate.
Even The Washington Post was compelled to report on the major story, though I don’t know how they covered it. If they had published the cartoon thousands of people who get the physical Washington Post and as well as the millions who pay to get around The WaPo’s paywall would have seen Ann’s cartoon, instead, as per The Streisand Effect, millions upon millions more have seen the Telnaes commentary as the story and the cartoon has been covered around the nation and world, and become a major embarrassment for the paper.
And cartoon organizations are condemning The Post for suppressing the image.
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists has issued a statement:
… The AAEC condemns the Post and their ethical weakness. Editorial cartooning is the tip of the spear in opinion, and the Post’s cowering further soils their once-stellar reputation for standing up and speaking truth to power. We weep for the loss of this once great newspaper…
We request that all editorial cartoonists do a finished version of her rough and post it in solidarity with Ann’s brave and sadly necessary decision. Please use the hash tag #StandWithAnn…
As has the international Freedom Cartoonists Foundation:
A cartoonist shows the way for courage and principle, while a major newspaper tramples on freedom of expression and humiliates itself in the process: Ann Telnaes leaves The Washington Post after the rejection of a cartoon showing tech moguls including Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos (the paper’s owner) courting Trump…
From comics and cartoon historian/editor and himself a cartoonist Richard Marschall:
… If we fib, going off the reservation of rational discourse, we will pay the price. But — I maintain — it should be a price of readers’ opprobrium, not an owner’s arbitrary guillotine. Especially an owner who specifically pledged not to do what “his people” did to Ann Telnaes…
Michael Rhode at Comics DC has made an attempt to keep a running inventory of the stories, but I’m afraid he will be overwhelmed. Perhaps the best we can ask of him is to track of the comics sites reporting and the cartoonists voicing their opinions. And they are making their voices heard and their pens seen.
Jack Ohman, Nick Anderson, Darrin Bell, Jason Chatfield, Michael de Adder (above), Daniel Boris (above), Clay Jones, Steve Brodner (an excerpt for our feature image), Keith Knight, Mark Fiore, Chris Britt and Chris Britt (above), James Mellor, Ruben Bolling, Barry Blitt, and, without a doubt, more on the way.
You can support Ann by subscribing to her Substack.
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