2025 starts with yet another tremendous blow to political cartooning; on Friday renowned cartoonist Ann Telnaes announced she quit her staff position at the Washington Post. The reason: for the first time since she started at the WaPo in 2008, one of her cartoons was refused because of the opinion in the cartoon.

The rough that was refused by the Washington Post

The drawing criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. 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.

Although Ann's decision has garnered a lot of international attention, because she is a high-profile cartoonist working at one of the best-known newspapers in the world, her case is far from unique. For me as editor of Cartoon Movement, 2025 started with several cartoonists emailing me with sad news that they had been let go from publications. These cartoonists join the ranks of artists facing similar difficulties in previous years. Cases range from Canada to Hungary to Slovakia. In some cases, the reason was cutbacks (we all know cartoonists are the first to go if costs need to be reduced), but in a worrying number of cases, it was a change of ownership in the publication which lead to the dismissal of the cartoonist.

In many parts of the world, the prevailing political climate is favorable to populists and (extreme) right-wing politicians. Just like Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, many publication owners (who in many cases also run other businesses) want to curry favor with the politicians in power. And having a pesky cartoonist mocking these politicians just isn't good for business.

We've written before about the rather deplorable state of political cartooning: Less and less possibilities to publish, no (paid) publication spots at all for young cartoonists and timid editors afraid to anger their audience. Add this new challenge to the mix and the situation goes from bad to dire...

And all this at a moment in time when speaking truth to power is more important than ever. Political satire and democracy are closely linked; if democracy comes under threat so does satire. But satire is also an important defender of democracy. It can expose the mechanisms of those who want to undermine democracy. Actually, Ann Telneas has made an excellent comic strip explaining exactly this in 2019, which you can read here.

Editorial Cartoonists and the Health of Democracy (fragment)

So what can you (assuming you're reading this because you like political cartoons) do to support political cartoonists? Here are a few tips. They are pretty self-evident, but it doesn't hurt to mention them again:

-Support your newspaper's cartoonist by writing a letter to the editor from time to time praising their work. Of course you should protest when a cartoonist is fired from a newspaper, but sending letters to the newspaper about the cartoons with some sort of frequency will let the editors know the cartoonists are valued by the readership.

-If your favorite publication doesn't feature political cartoons yet, let them know you'd like to see them there. Preferably not just once, but every chance you get.

-Share cartoons as much as possible. If we want to save to profession for future generations, we must make political cartoons unavoidable. And to do that, we depend on cartoons getting to as many eyeballs as possible. This means sharing cartoons by any means possible,  ranging from social media to cutting them out and hanging them on your fridge. Also consider using them in your newsletters, presentation and or websites (in which case you will have to pay a cartoonist a small fee for the use of their work) or on a protest sign.

-Does your favorite cartoonist have a Patreon or Substack page? Maybe they offer a monthly subscription, which is a great way to support their work.

-Donate to organizations like Cartooning for Peace, Cartoonists Rights or us, who work to promote editorial cartoons and help cartoonists in various ways.

Thanks for your support!

Tjeerd Royaards, editor of Cartoon Movement