Comms About Dilbert Cancellation
/A class discussion about Dilbert creator Scott Adams’s “racist rant” in a YouTube video can take many directions, including whether what he said was truly racist and whether media outlets did the right thing. Putting making the decision aside, a safer approach is to compare statements communicating the decision. Here are three examples for students to analyze:
Cleveland.com. In a letter announcing the change in The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, the editor wrote, “This is not a difficult decision.” The editor incudes excerpts from the video to get ahead of criticism: “I hate to quote him at all, but I do so to dissuade responses that this is a ‘cancel culture’ decision.” For context, the editor also cites an article noting that 77 other outlets cancelled Dilbert in September after he introduced the first Black character, as critics said, "apparently to poke fun at 'woke' culture and the LGBTQ community."
USA Today. The newspaper, with the largest circulation in the United States, kept it simple with this tweet.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Between these two examples, is a short statement that includes a caveat: “While we acknowledge his right to free speech and expression, he does not have a right to the AJC’s financial support or our platform.”
Students might also analyze Adams’s response in a tweet and video in which he said, "Most of my income will be gone by next week . . . My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this, am I right?” This warrants another class discussion: can people redeem themselves after a crisis? I would argue that the first step is vulnerability, but that’s for another post.
