Elon Musk calls US media racist over Dilbert comic strip backlash

Syndication partner Andrews McMeel Universal, newspapers drop comic after racist rant by cartoonist Scott Adams.

The Twitter CEO made the comments in response to an article posted by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Elon Musk has suggested the US media is racist against white and Asian people as he appeared to defend the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, which was recently dropped by several newspapers.

The Twitter chief executive made the remarks in a thread on the platform in response to an article posted by the San Francisco Chronicle that detailed the saga surrounding racist comments by Scott Adams.

“The media is racist,” Mr Musk wrote on Sunday.

“For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians,” he added. “Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.”

Twitter and Mr Adams didn’t respond to requests for comment. Several US newspapers dropped Mr Adams’s long-running comic last week after the cartoonist called Black Americans a “hate group” in a rant posted online.

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert.

Mr Adams made his comments on Wednesday in response to a Rasmussen Poll that said a small majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white.” The poll said that 53pc of Black Americans agreed with the statement, 26pc disagreed and 21pc weren’t sure.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group,” Mr Adams said at one point in an online video. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people … because there is no fixing this.” Publishers, including Gannett’s USA Today Network, which includes more than 200 newspapers, quickly started announcing they were dropping Dilbert.

“Recent discriminatory comments by the creator, Scott Adams, have influenced our decision to discontinue publishing his comic,” Gannett said in a statement.

“While we respect and encourage free speech, his views do not align with our editorial or business values as an organisation.”

Mr Adams, in subsequent talks shared on his website and YouTube channel and comments on Twitter, addressed the outrage several times. In a post on Friday, he called the US “a thoroughly racist society” and said people had misunderstood the context of his remarks.

Mr Adams’s syndication partner, Andrews McMeel Universal, later said it was severing its ties with him.

“Andrews McMeel Universal is severing our relationship with Dilbert creator Scott Adams,” the company’s chairman Hugh Andrews and CEO Andy Sareyan said in a statement.

“The process of this termination will extend to all areas of our business with Adams and the Dilbert comic strip.” “Recent comments by Scott Adams regarding race and race relations do not align with our core values as a company,” they added.

The Wall Street Journal