Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post since 2013, prevented the paper from calling for a vote for Kamala Harris. The newspaper will not be able to expressly support any of the options. This breaks a tradition of almost half a century.
Just a few days after making public the decision to "remain equidistant", the newspaper lost more than 200,000 digital subscriptions, approximately 8% of its paying readers.
16 Washington Post columnists signed a statement of protest to express their outrage at the move.
Some cartoons have been published in different media responding to Bezos' order, here you can see some of them. Many of these jokes ironise the slogan adopted in 2017 by the Washington Post:"Democracy dies in the dark".
The cartoon that has circulated the most these days has been the one by Ann Telnaes. Although it is not particularly original because painting cartoons black or leaving them white is something that has already been done a lot and the newspaper's slogan made it obvious, what makes it different in the eyes of many is that Telnaes works for the Washington Post.
Anne has simply done her job, something that still comes as a shock to many readers and media professionals around here, accustomed to the historical and misunderstood unconditional "loyalty" of journalists and cartoonists to the editorial line and to trenchant stances with the position taken by the media.