Is Media Matters finally about to face some real, tangible pushback for its decades of smear-merchanting? According to Elon Musk, the answer is yes, and it’s going to happen very soon.
The billionaire announced on Friday that the moment the courts open on Monday, Media Matters will face a lawsuit over a recent “study” it performed and published involving advertising on X. In it, the far-left organization claimed proof
The shorter version of the above document is that Media Matters set out to “prove” that X places advertertisements on supposedly hateful conduct. The implication being that advertisers are then endorsing whatever content their ads end up adjacent to. Thus, they should not run ads on X lest they be associated negatively.
It’s a game as old as time for the left. Targeting advertisers in order to quash free speech has been going on since the beginning of the information age and has only accelerated in the last decade or so. Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson has faced the onslaught over the years. Unfortunately, the tactic has often worked, a result that has only emboldened organizations like Media Matters to keep up the attacks.
In this case, Musk’s allegation is that Media Matters purposedly and maliciously gamed the system in order to manufacture the results of its “study” with the goal of scaring advertisers off under false pretenses. More specifically, Media Matters allegedly created an account and curated the accounts it follows and what advertisements it sees, likely by blocking most advertisers in order to increase the probability of garnering a set of specific companies they wanted to target. They then refreshed the account’s timeline over and over until they got the screenshots they wanted for their narrative.
If that’s what happened, there might be a real path to legal victory for the billionaire. Certainly, most conservatives will be cheering him on. Media Matters is an awful, deceptive organization that routinely takes right-leaning news sources out of context in order to present their comments in a false light. The goal, as always, is to then destroy those news outlets (or often podcasters) by attacking their ability to generate revenue. It’s insidious and flies in the face of American ideals.
Media Matters getting taken down would be a great day for freedom.
