Media Matters lays off at least a dozen staffers amid legal woes

Left-wing media watchdog Media Matters for America laid off at least a dozen employees, with some appearing to blame Elon Musk, who has sued the comapny.

"Bad News: I’ve been laid off from @mmfa, along with a dozen colleagues," one employee wrote on the social media platform, X. "There’s a reason far-right billionaires attack Media Matters with armies of lawyers: They know how effective our work is, and it terrifies them (him)."

"After nearly four years of working at media matters, I got laid off. So if anyone is looking for researchers with video experience, drop a line," another ex-employee wrote. 

In 2023, Media Matters published an article entitled "As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content." 

The article showed ads for major companies next to antisemitic posts. X sued the company, alleging that it manipulated the algorithm to create the ad pairings and omitted its methodology to falsely paint the pairings as common and scare off its advertisers.

Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit against the outlet for not turning over documents for an investigation into the group's alleged business fraud. 

“We’re confronting a legal assault on multiple fronts and given how rapidly the media landscape is shifting, we need to be extremely intentional about how we allocate resources in order to stay effective,” Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said in a statement, the New York Post reported.