Under Legal Assault From Elon Musk and Others, Media Matters Cuts Staff

Media Matters for America said Wednesday it will lay off about a dozen staffers. And the progressive watchdog group, along with one of its employees, inferred that the cuts could be due to a lawsuit filed against it by Elon Musk’s X social media platform.

“We’re confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and, given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone told Newsweek.

“Nobody does what Media Matters does. So we’re taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead.”

Some of the employees who were let go took to X to alert their followers of their plight and seek new employment.

User Kat Abu posted: “Bad News: I’ve been laid off from @mmfa, along with a dozen colleagues. There’s a reason far-right billionaires attack Media Matters with armies of lawyers: They know how effective our work is, and it terrifies them (him).”

And user Alex Paterson posted: “I got laid off from Media Matters @mmfa today, proud of the 5 years of intense work I put into fighting right-wing hatred. I’m an incredible manager with superb research skills. Please hire me!”

And user Bobby Lewis joked: “ism milestone achieved (got laid off).”

Newsweek requested comment from Musk and his attorneys.

Media Matters is best known for encouraging businesses to yank their advertising dollars from conservative media, particularly the Fox News channel and talk radio. Some of its more high-profile campaigns took aim at Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, the late Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura Schlessinger and the late Andrew Breitbart.

But when it set its sights on Musk by way of a November 16 report claiming that posts praising Nazis and white nationalists ran alongside ads for Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, IBM and Oracle, his X Corp. sued four days later, acknowledging that all but Oracle pulled their advertising.

In its lawsuit, X calls the Media Matters report “false, defamatory, and misleading.” It also says that X uses safeguards to prevent what the report alleges, and that “Media Matters itself—not X—was responsible for placement of the content it identified through its willful exploitation of X’s user features—a result it specifically intended to bring about.”

After Musk’s lawsuit was filed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called Media Matters a “radical anti-free speech organization” and said he would be investigating the group.

And in March, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued Media Matters on the grounds that it failed to turn over internal documents that would allegedly prove that X is a haven for hate speech.

“Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America,” the lawsuit claims.

By Wednesday night, the left and the right were bemoaning and celebrating the layoffs, respectively.

Chaya Raichik, the founder of Libs of TikTok and a frequent target of Media Matters, posted on X: “The left are all blaming Elon for Media Matters cutting staff. MM literally made a fake report to convince advertisers to leave X, lost X millions of dollars in revenue, and then acted shocked when Elon responded with a lawsuit. These braindead people will literally blame anyone for their problems and never look in the mirror.”

Tim Onion, the self-described “chief brunchlord” of The Onion, the satirical news outlet that Musk has derided as “woke,” posted to X: “This is why right-wing billionaires sue people reporting on them. They know they can’t win these lawsuits. But they also know legal fees will cripple the little guy reporting on their lies and crimes. This is how free speech is actually chilled—vengeful dipsh*t billionaires.”

And Larry Elder, the conservative talk-radio host who has also been targeted by Media Matters, likened the group to NPR, an outlet that is partially funded by taxpayers and is also criticized by the political right.

“As between Media Matters and NPR, it’s a coin toss as to which of these anti-Trump, anti-GOP, anti-conservative outlets is worse,” Elder told Newsweek. “But at least in the case of Media Matters taxpayers don’t pay for it.”