In a legal battle that pits a social media giant against a progressive “media watchdog,” X Corp (formerly Twitter) has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for America, alleging intentional deception and a malicious campaign aimed at damaging the company's reputation and revenue stream.
The lawsuit filed by X Corp. includes allegations of defamation, intentional interference with contractual relations, and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage.
“X Corp. and Elon Musk are a critical Media Matters target because X is the most prominent online platform that permits users to share all viewpoints, whether liberal or conservative, and Mr. Musk is the most prominent voice on the platform and a passionate supporter of free speech,” the lawsuit claims.
X Corp. filed the suit in United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division.
In it, X accuses Media Matters of orchestrating a deliberate and deceptive effort to portray the platform as a hub for "white nationalist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."
The lawsuit contends that Media Matters manufactured misleading images, falsely depicting advertiser posts on X's platform alongside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content.
Media Matters is accused of intentional deception that led major advertisers, including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal and IBM, to withdraw all ads from X. The companies cited the pairings of advertisements and controversial content as an "entirely unacceptable situation."
According to the complaint, Media Matters exclusively followed a small subset of users known for producing extreme, fringe content and accounts owned by X's major advertisers. The lawsuit claims that Media Matters then manipulated algorithms to create manufactured images, presenting a false narrative of advertisers' posts appearing next to objectionable content on the platform.
X Corp argues that actions by Media Matters were not only deceptive but caused harm to the company's revenue stream by influencing advertisers to withdraw from the platform based on false information.
The lawsuit accuses Media Matters of engaging in a "guerilla warfare and sabotage" campaign against conservative news sources, with X Corp and Musk as critical targets because the platform allows users to share diverse viewpoints.
X Corp. contends that it invests heavily in technologies to ensure a safe and effective user experience for both users and advertisers. The company emphasizes its default protections and opt-in options for advertisers to prevent their ads from being placed next to content that violates community guidelines.
Musk's legal team argues that the case could expose Media Matters’ reporting process and funding sources during discovery, according to the New York Post.
The efforts by Media Matters are seen as a prolonged attack on the X platform launched after Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.
Following Musk’s purchase, Twitter opened the company’s email database to journalists who compiled the “Twitter Files” series of investigative reports, exposing the expansive censorship campaign by the Biden Administration and Democrats – as well as politicians in other nations – to remove disfavored but often true content from the platform and other social media channels.
Those journalists, including Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, were recently awarded the Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism for their efforts.
The reports also spawned an anti-censorship lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, which will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024.
Musk and X have also filed suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in the United Kingdom – where defamation laws are much more strict – claiming that criticism of X's handling of hate speech is unfounded.
Similarly, that lawsuit alleges that the CCDH deliberately aimed to drive advertisers away from the platform by publishing reports critical of its response to “hateful content.”
X Corp. claims that CCDH violated its terms of service and federal hacking laws by scraping data from the platform and encouraging an unnamed individual to improperly collect information about X.
The exodus of advertisers has been pronounced since Musk said the platform would no longer engage in government-led censorship efforts.
Half of Twitter's top 100 advertisers left the platform after Musk assumed the role of CEO in October 2022. General Motors, Pfizer, Ford and AMC Networks were among them.
Media Matters was founded David Brock.
Brock, a former conservative journalist and author, is a controversial media figure who's best known for attacking the Clinton Administration before he switched parties and accepted funds from the Clintons for media operations in support of Democrat campaigns, according to The Nation.
Out of that relationship grew Media Matters, which is known for its critical, partisan reporting on conservatives and conservative media outlets.
Brock notably created a similar organization called Correct the Record, solely to defend Hillary Clinton as her "own personal media watchdog” in the aftermath of her time as Secretary of State.
In the past, Media Matters has criticized reporting by Legal Newsline.