Missouri Attorney General Andrew Baily is suing Media Matters after the progressive research organization refused to comply with the state’s investigation.
Media Matters has been under investigation since November 2023 for fraudulently conducting business and for soliciting donations from Missouri residents under false pretenses.
“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,” said Bailey in a press release. “However, 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.”
Media Matters is accused of attempting to cause X to suffer serious financial losses by manipulating the platform’s algorithm to put advertisements next to controversial posts to cause concern among advertisers. Media Matters published a report in 2023 questioning technology billionaire Elon Musk’s leadership of the platform and alleging that ads were being placed next to antisemitic content.
Musk sued the left-leaning watchdog group for “maliciously” misleading the public about X’s operations, per The Hill.
In his March 2024 lawsuit, Missouri AG Bailey called Media Matters a “political activist organization” and X “one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America.” The state believes Media Matters has violated its Merchandising Practices Act and notes that the organization has refused to comply with the investigation despite being issued a Civil Investigative Demand.
The suit states: Media Matters has pursued an activist agenda in its attempt to destroy X, because they cannot control it. 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.
Bailey has asked the circuit court to compel Media Matters to respond to its Civil Investigative Demand within 20 days.
The complaint notes Media Matters previously refused to cooperate with the Texas Attorney General's Office after it opened an investigation into the organization’s business practices.
Media Matters filed a lawsuit against Texas in Maryland in response to the investigation. The organization counterclaimed that Texas AG Ken Paxton had violated the First Amendment and that his investigation was an “unlawful retaliation” to its report about X’s advertising practices, per NBC News.
