Space entrepreneur Elon Musk has issued another attack on the media after taking offence at being called a “billionaire” rather than an engineer or scientist.
Responding to a user on Twitter, the Tesla and Space X founder criticised the label which he said “is almost always meant to devalue & denigrate the subject”.
“I wasn’t called that until my companies got to a certain size, but reality is that I still do the same science & engineering as before. Just the scale has changed,” he tweeted.
When another user criticised his comments, the 47-year-old responded by pointing out he has helped to create jobs "for 50,000 people directly" and "250,000 people indirectly, thus supporting half a million families".
"What have you done?" he quipped.
His outburst was in response to an article reporting that Thai cave rescue officials had turned down a child-sized submarine he had donated to the operation.
Mr Musk had hoped the equipment would help rescue the trapped schoolboys and flew to Chiang Rai with it on Monday, but authorities said it was "not practical for our mission".
It is not the first time Mr Musk has taken a swipe at the media - he published a series of rants on Twitter against news outlets in May following reports about Tesla vehicle safety and working conditions at its plants which he felt were unfair.
