As Legal Insurrection has extensively documented over the years, Media Matters for America (MMFA) is a genuinely awful leftist organization whose two main purposes in life are to ruthlessly cancel conservative voices for WrongThink and forcibly shut down media outlets that don’t toe the woketivist line.
Funded in part by billionaire Democratic megadonors, including George Soros, MMFA’s big ticket targets over the years since its 2003 founding have been the late Rush Limbaugh and other popular conservative personalities like Laura Ingraham, as well as news networks like Fox News, zeroing in on Tucker Carlson and his program in particular while he was still at Fox.
They’ve done this in large part by using astroturfing campaigns against their opposition and pressuring advertisers to starve their targets of advertising dollars to the point they have no choice but to give in, be fired, or shut down.
Furthermore, Democratic politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have been caught using MMFA talking points in their own campaigns. Supposedly objective media outlets like the Washington Post, too, have in the past treated MMFA’s frequently false claims as non-partisan “expertise” without noting they were a far-left organization with many political axes to grind.
But, things have changed for the worse for the Angelo Carusone-led Media Matters in recent years, with their decision to target X owner Elon Musk leading to Musk unleashing lawsuit hell, which also led to red state lawsuits against MMFA. And in May, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into MMFA to determine “whether its reporting on X amounted to illegal collusion with advertisers.”
The result of all the legal battles has led to rampant infighting and mounting debts, according to a sympathetic New York Times piece, with one memo even floating the idea of MMFA closing up shop for good:
The organization, which is funded by some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, has racked up about $15 million in legal fees over the past 20 months to defend itself against lawsuits by Elon Musk, in addition to investigations by Mr. Trump’s Federal Trade Commission and Republican state attorneys general.
The group has slashed the size of its staff and scrambled to raise more cash from skittish donors, according to documents and interviews with 11 people familiar with the organization’s fight to survive.
That might not be enough. Media Matters tried to settle with Mr. Musk by offering concessions, but the sides were far apart and talks fizzled. Even when the group has triumphed in court, Mr. Musk has appealed or filed new cases elsewhere. As a last resort, it has considered shuttering, according to interviews and an internal document.
[…]Media Matters has also been frozen out by some allies. And it has faced plummeting staff morale, rising infighting and security concerns.
Further, they brought back their founder, David Brock, after Donald Trump won reelection in 2024. But that hasn’t worked out so well, either:
After Mr. Trump retook the White House last fall, Mr. Brock was brought back into the Media Matters fold to help navigate the X litigation. But he soon clashed with others, and has been sidelined.[…]In early February, frustrated by what some at Media Matters saw as the high cost and slow pace of their lawyers at the influential Democratic firm Elias Law Group, the advocacy group began transitioning the X cases to different law firms. An Elias lawyer notified the group that it owed roughly $4 million.
As one might imagine, that ruffled a few MMFA feathers:
Considering MMFA’s notorious history, no one on the conservative side is shedding a single tear:
MMFA is learning the hard way about reaping and sowing, bless their hearts.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY