Some people may call it the chickens coming home to roost. Media Matters for America (MMfA), a George Soros-funded left-wing censorship group, reportedly may be on the verge of collapse. The organization is reeling after a series of lawsuits and government investigations, which are straining its already frazzled finances. (MMfA raised $19 million in 2023 — and somehow spent $20 million.) But here’s what some may consider poetic justice: The group essentially claims the government is now doing the Right’s bidding in an effort to destroy it.
This is the same group, a 2012 report held, that was previously coordinating with the government to destroy the Right.
As Breitbart informs:
Media Matters, the leftist nonprofit notorious for its scorched-earth campaigns against conservative media, is reportedly in a state of crisis, reeling from a series of lawsuits, federal investigations, mass layoffs, infighting, and donor panic. The New York Times now confirms what many on the right have suspected for months: the group’s legal and financial foundation is cracking, and its future is in jeopardy.
The collapse follows an aggressive legal response to what Elon Musk and Republican officials describe as Media Matters’ attempt to trigger a boycott of X, the social media platform owned by Musk. After the group published a report accusing X of placing major brand ads next to pro-Nazi content, Musk responded by accusing the group of manipulating data. X filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and defamation. Republican attorneys general in Texas and Missouri followed up with investigations into the group’s funding and alleged deception of donors.
Despite claiming it has “no plans to close,” Media Matters has quietly cut back its attacks, slashed staff, and even floated shuttering operations entirely, according to interviews and internal documents obtained by the Times.
The group has racked up over $15 million in legal bills in less than two years, alienated donors, and now reportedly faces a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation — revealed through documents obtained by Reuters and not yet publicly confirmed by the commission — into whether it colluded with other liberal organizations to suppress advertising on Musk’s platform.
Well, collusion is (was?) its business.
MMfA is one of those entities most Americans usually don’t hear about. But such groups have long worked behind the scenes, feverishly, to censor traditionalist opposition — often with government funding and complicity. (The New American has been thus targeted for years.) As to examples, podcast StateOfDaniel related Friday that MMfA
attempted to cancel Rush Limbaugh by taking him out of context and then using that information to pressure advertisers to boycott his show. The goal was to get him off the airwaves…. Media Matters was also behind the Drop Fox campaign, with the obvious goal of getting Fox News off our televisions. It wasn’t just radio or TV; it extended online as well. Ben Shapiro has accused Media Matters of working with the New York Times to pressure YouTube into censoring and shadow-banning conservative channels.
Such activity is more effective than many may think. For the Left has employed multiple methods of censorship. (Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for details.) Just consider, for example, Big Tech manipulation. Research has shown that it alone can shift 15 million votes toward a given presidential candidate at election time. And this bias was, until fairly recently, always directed toward electing Democrats.
(Relevance: Big Tech would often decide whom to censor based on information provided by entities such as MMfA.)
Now, however, the worm has turned, at least somewhat and for the time being. For instance, in April, a federal judge allowed Musk’s lawsuit to proceed to trial. X’s charge: MMfA used manipulative tactics that led to a $75 million advertiser revenue loss. This development compelled the group to try, The New York Times writes,
to reach a settlement with X’s lawyers. X demanded that Media Matters retract its report about antisemitic content, pay X all the money left in the group’s bank account and shut down.
Well, you can’t accuse Musk of not giving a guy options — or an option, anyway.
For MMfA’s part, the Times also states that it
proposed explaining its methodology in its report, adding a statement from X and donating to a mutually agreed charity.
But the censorship organization is fighting back as well. For example, MMfA sued the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday to block the agency’s investigation into its dealings. It claims the government’s probe is, essentially, unlawful retaliation.
A few more relevant points about the case:
“What’s perhaps most astonishing,” though, remarks PJ Media, quoting the Times, “is that MMFA ‘raised nearly $250 million in the two decades between its creation in 2003 and the end of 2023.’ And now they’re broke. How is that even possible?”
Perhaps the answer is that, as is common with the Left, MMfA is essentially a nut house. As the Daily Caller reported in 2012, the group’s leader, David Brock, is a “volatile,” “erratic” man with mental issues. In fact, the site writes, his executive assistant actually “carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.” (So much for the Left’s disdain for firearms.)
Moreover, as the top commenter under the StateOfDaniel video theorizes, maybe MMfA was being subsidized with “USAID money.” I haven’t heard this mentioned in any reportage, mind you. But given how the Left funneled tax money to its allies via USAID, such suspicion is understandable.
All this said, don’t write MMfA’s eulogy just yet. While the group is currently wobbling, PJ Media suspects that “another billionaire donor will step up and bail them out.”
And what’s for sure is that this is why elections matter. Should the Democrats regain power in 2028, MMfA’s and other leftist groups’ machinations — the censorship, cancel culture, the funding of our civilization’s destruction with our tax money — will return with a vengeance. So the moral of this story is, don’t mistake battles for wars and relative dormancy for death.