Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed a lawsuit against the far-left organization Media Matters, a self-proclaimed “progressive research and information center,” claiming that the organization may have used fraud when it solicited donations from Show Me State residents in what Bailey referred to as their “attempt to destroy X, because they cannot control it.”
Specifically, Bailey has filed a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”), demanding that the so-called media watchdog turn over documentation pertaining to its solicitation of donations in the wake of a controversy that occurred when multiple corporations pulled advertising from X after Media Matters accused Musk of allowing the platform to descend “into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
“My office has reason to believe Media Matters used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to bully advertisers into pulling out of X, the last social media platform dedicated to free speech in America, so we launched an investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Bailey said in a press release.
The attorney general claimed that “Media Matters has a sordid history of refusing to cooperate with investigations. I’m not going to let this activist group stonewall us. If there has been any attempt to defraud Missourians in order to trample on their free speech rights, I will root it out and hold bad actors accountable.”
In November, Musk also filed suit against the far-left advocacy group, claiming it “knowingly and maliciously” portrayed ads adjacent to what some called hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.”
Media Matters has referred to Musk’s allegations as “frivolous,” and said they were “meant to bully X’s critics into silence.”
According to Bailey, Media Matters “envisions itself monitoring, analyzing, and correcting ‘conservative misinformation’ in the U.S. media. In fact, this description falls far short of reality for this political activist organization. Instead, rather than passively ‘monitoring,’ 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.”
Back in November, a Media Matters story accused Musk and his social-media platform of placing ads for prominent companies next to pro-Hitler and Holocaust denial posts. The accusations were the reason given for an advertising boycott of X by companies including Disney, Apple, Comcast, IBM, Warner Brothers, Paramount Global, and Lionsgate.
“During all of this Musk-induced chaos, corporate advertisements have also been appearing on pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, pro-violence, and neo-Nazi accounts,” claimed the Media Matters piece penned by Eric Hanonoki. “[X CEO Linda] Yaccarino has attempted to placate companies by claiming that ‘brands are now “protected from the risk of being next to” potentially toxic content.’”
Yaccarino denied the Media Matters charge: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board — I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform — X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.”
In Bailey’s mind, Media Matter sought to destroy X when they realized it was beyond their ability to control it.
“Media Matters has pursued an activist agenda in its attempt to destroy X, because they cannot control it,” the Missouri AG said. “And because they cannot control it, or the free speech platform it provides to Missourians to express their own viewpoints in the public square, the radical ‘progressives’ at Media Matters have resorted to fraud to, as Benjamin Franklin once said, mark X ‘for the odium of the public, as an enemy to the liberty of the press.’ Missourians will not be manipulated by ‘progressive’ activists masquerading as news outlets, and they will not be defrauded in the process.”
Media Matters has never strayed far from its original George Soros-funded mission to promote global communism at all costs. While it claims to be a “watchdog” group ferreting out right-wing “disinformation,” in reality it’s nothing more than a far-left noise machine designed to discourage information seekers from locating the truth.
