Fact Check

Elon Musk Called 'Mediocre White Man' by theGrio Columnist?

Social media users were asking whether an op-ed about the billionaire was real.

Published March 21, 2024

 (Yahoo News)
Image courtesy of Yahoo News
Claim:
An X user posted a screenshot of a legitimate news opinion column in March 2024 that referred to Elon Musk as a "mediocre white man."

On March 21, 2024, the X account @EndWokeness uploaded a screenshot purportedly showing the headline of a theGrio opinion column, which was syndicated on Yahoo News, that called X owner Elon Musk a "mediocre white man" (archived here).

The screengrab allegedly showed columnist Michael Harriot wrote the article. It contained a picture of Elon Musk during a March 18 interview with former CNN host Don Lemon. The headline read:

Don Lemon interviewed a mediocre white man

Other X users replied to the post asking whether the article was real, while some were certain it was not.

However, the opinion piece was real and was originally published by theGrio, and so we have rated this "True." It was published on March 20, 2024.

An editor's note at the top of the article expressed how the article was an opinion column, and that the views expressed in it were the author's own.

Sources

'Don Lemon Interviewed a Mediocre White Man'. Yahoo News, 20 Mar. 2024, https://www.yahoo.com/news/don-lemon-interviewed-mediocre-white-173142498.html.

Elon Musk on Racism, Bailing Out Trump, Hate Speech, and More - The Don Lemon Show (Full Interview). www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhsfjBpKiTw. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

Harriot, Michael. 'Don Lemon Interviewed a Mediocre White Man'. TheGrio, 20 Mar. 2024, https://thegrio.com/2024/03/20/don-lemon-interviewed-a-mediocre-white-man/.

Nick Hardinges is a London-based reporter who previously worked as a fact-checker at Reuters.

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