Elon Musk lashed out at the U.S. media over the weekend, accusing the industry of being “racist against whites and Asians” after a slew of newspapers canceled long-running cartoon “Dilbert.”
The comic strip, which launched in 1989 and pokes fun at the corporate world, was dropped by various newspapers—including The Washington Post, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer and The Los Angeles Times—over the past few days after its creator, Scott Adams, posted a video to YouTube on Wednesday in which he made racist comments.
In the clip, Adams, who is white, labeled black Americans as a “hate group” and said white people should “get the hell away” from them. Adams posted a subsequent video last week where he confirmed the cancelation of “Dilbert” and said most of his income would be gone within days.
“My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed,” he said. “You can't come back from this.”
His initial comments were in response to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, which polled 1,000 American adults and found around one in four black respondents disagreed with the phrase “It’s okay to be white.”
The phrase, which is believed to have been popularized through social media in 2017, has been used by white supremacists.
In response to a tweet about the Dilbert cancelation and the Rasmussen findings, Musk alleged on Sunday that “the media is racist.”
Elaborating on his accusations, he says he meant the American press, as well as elite U.S. colleges and high schools, were racist toward white and Asian people, but did not provide any evidence of his claim.
For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023
Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America.
Maybe they can try not being racist.
Representatives for Musk were not immediately available for comment when contacted by Fortune.
In a letter to readers on Friday, Chris Quinn, editor of the Plain Dealer, said dropping “Dilbert” was “not a difficult decision.”
“This is a decision based on the principles of this news organization and the community we serve,” he said. “We are not a home for those who espouse racism. We certainly do not want to provide them with financial support.”
In another tweet on Sunday, Musk responded to an account that claimed media coverage of police violence against white people was given a fraction of the coverage dedicated to similar cases involving black victims, saying it was “very disproportionate to promote a false narrative.”
Musk’s comments in recent days are his latest criticism of the media, with the Tesla and Twitter CEO hitting out at the industry many times in the past.
Last year, Musk, the world’s second richest person, accused the media of publishing a “relentless hatestream” of bad news.
At the end of 2022, he slammed “corporate journalism” and “legacy media,” shortly after taking to Twitter to accuse the press of being “against free speech.”
Back in 2018, Musk put negative press coverage of Tesla down to “holier-than-thou hypocrisy” of the media and claimed the public “no longer respects” big media companies.
