Report: ‘Media Matters’ Barely Hanging on as Lawsuits, Infighting, and Mounting Debts Take Their Toll
“Media Matters has also been frozen out by some allies. And it has faced plummeting staff morale, rising infighting and security concerns.”
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.”
Good. Guess what? We voted for this.
— MT Richardson (@JackBurtonNole) May 22, 2025
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:
A fun exchange between Media Matters and Marc Elias's firm in this @kenvogel story on how Media Matters is on the brink of closing https://t.co/5Fbyqc4Qrw pic.twitter.com/RWQ5ppSheX
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 25, 2025
Considering MMFA’s notorious history, no one on the conservative side is shedding a single tear:
The Censorship Industrial Complex is in trouble, and I love to see it. https://t.co/P8u5xXoTRT pic.twitter.com/wzS0BVwFV4
— Meg Gallagher (@meggalla) July 25, 2025
Group spent 20 years trying to destroy people and organizations. Now it's a target. https://t.co/9Bm3I5KJcU
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 25, 2025
It’s so odd that as USAID money dries up these liberal orgs are running out of money. https://t.co/oOetwgyPNQ
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) July 25, 2025
How much money was Media Matters getting from USAID linked NGOs?
— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) July 25, 2025
Media Matters is a horrible organization for whom karma has come. 🪃💥 https://t.co/QJPOvIBsC0
— David Larkin (@davexesq) July 25, 2025
Their business was putting people out of business. Now, they’re going out of business. Media Matters will now experience what they put countless innocent victims through. What goes around comes around. https://t.co/g2ASExLD53
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) July 25, 2025
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. –
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Comments
and thats why lefty hates capitalism ( many reasons)
b/c it then exposes their failures and b/c they cant get bail outs from the sheep…they plummet
If you go into the dictionary to look up the word “grifter“ you will see a portrait of David Brock. I always hoped that the Mossad could spare the time and have one of its agents clip George Soros. They would be doing the world a big favor just like they did civilization a big favor by destroying Iran‘s nuclear facilities.
Lefty fronts are falling like dominos, they are entering a Dem self induced dark age
Media matters is one the most terrible organizations out there. There is no shameless that won’t tell to advance their narrations. That they are a tax exempt organization has infuriated me for years because they obviously are completely political and partisan in their actions. It convinced almost more than anything how corrupt our government is.
Couldn’t happier to. a nicer organization.
Trump was the first user of Media Matters. Imus was letting Obama on the air as an interview guest and wouldn’t let Hillary on, saying she’s a horrible person. Hillary asked friend Trump to ask his friend Imus to put Hillary on the air. Imus told Trump no way, and Trump reported back to Hillary. The next day Media Matters seized on the first thing Imus said that day and the rest is history. Imus was cancelled owing to a MM-generated storm of outrage.
That hardly makes Trump responsible. Hillary would have destroyed Imus whether or not Trump was in the equation. She likely held out long enough to see if Trump could grease the skids for her, and when that didn’t happen she dumped on Imus, which, as I’ve mentioned, would have happened anyway when Hillary didn’t get her way. (And I’m presuming that Hillary went to MM for action, something you don’t mention. MM may have dumped on Imus without Hillary’s prodding, and that would have likewise had nothing to do with Trump.)
Really, you need to work on your critical thinking. A Vulcan you are not.
Since it’s targeting mid-wits, it should be called Medium Hatters.
My heart bleeds.
No, wait, that was just some gas. I’m fine now. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I like stories with happy endings
Spock: “They are dying”
Capt Kirk: “Let them die”
Set phasers for annihilation.
I was once in someone else’s home when I heard a familiar noise. I said, “Either someone nearby is watching an episode of the original Star Trek, or there’s a phaser somewhere around here that’s been set on ‘overload’.”
Ah, I remember the age of flip-phones. There was one you could enhance to emit the triple chirp every time you opened it.
I’ll make some popcorn
I like the ‘hanging’ part.
A surprising and gratifying story to start my day.
Unlike other modern fairy tales, this one ends in actual punishment of the evildoer… punishment we need not depend on some corrupt judge to deliver or deny.
Thank heaven for free-market forces, doing jobs that American governments won’t do.
The left now has to spend their own money to support their causes and NPR/PBS and PP and some outfits are going to go down
FAFO. Hard.
Soros and Clinton thought they had it all figured out. Make the taxpayer foot the bill for their propaganda. Now the checks been cut off.
I can’t stop laughing. ‘Media Matters’…which in fact should be called ‘Getting Democrats Elected At Any Cost Matters’…imploding as their lies drag them under. The leftists in the media are like a parasitic infection that has spread throughout what used to be called journalism. Now the goal is trying to spread their infection to the general population with constant lies and/or refusal to report facts that go against their leftist narrative, to help democrats. The infection eventually drive the ‘journalist’ insane, spreading to their brain and causing TDS.