BY SHAWN MCCARTHY

American media companies face accusations of self-censorship and legal cowardice as they confront a new term for President-elect Donald Trump, who has targeted the press as an enemy.

Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned in early January after the paper’s editors spiked her cartoon showing media owners and tech billionaires genuflecting to Trump. The cartoon depicted Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.

In a post on her Substack, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist said she had “never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

The Post’s opinion editor David Shipley issued a statement saying the cartoon was pulled because columnists at the paper had covered the same ground and he wanted to avoid “repetition.”

Telnaes targeted Disney’s ABC after the network came under fire for settling a defamation lawsuit Trump had launched over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ statement that then-candidate Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In fact, he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.

Numerous critics have slammed ABC, The Washington Post and other legacy media outlets of cowardice in the face of Trump threats.

The Washington Post and L.A. Times sparked outrage among Democrats and columnists in November when their billionaire owners refused to endorse a candidate in the presidential election.

Telnaes’ inclusion in the cartoon of Meta’s Zuckerberg appears prescient. Less than a week after her resignation, Zuckerberg announced Meta’ Facebook would no longer fact check posts on the global social media sites. Trump and his supporters have long complained about fact checking on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X, saying the practice amounts to censorship.

There are concerns that the change will lead to an increase in disinformation and misleading comments on these social media sites on such sensitive issues as immigration, climate change and vaccine safety.

During Trump’s first term, Telnaes warned of increasing threats to press freedom around the world, and in the United States in particular. In a keynote speech at the 2017 World Press Freedom Canada’s annual luncheon, she noted the administration was threatening to impose tougher libel laws to constrain the press, a threat that is being revisited as Trump takes office for a second time.