The federal government is now investigating the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, an organization that Elon Musk is currently suing.
The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced the investigation into whether the nonprofit illegally colluded with advertisers in a boycott of X, The New York Times reports, citing two unnamed sources. The investigation demands that Media Matters turn over all documents the organization has received or created regarding advertiser boycotts.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, appointed by President Trump, hinted at conducting such investigations in December, saying, “We must prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms” in a statement about an unrelated case.
In 2023, Musk filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, which is still ongoing, claiming that it attempted to damage his social media company X’s relationship with advertisers. That lawsuit seems hinged on research published by Media Matters on antisemitic and hateful content flourishing on X, shortly after Musk’s purchase of the platform.
The study pointed out that the platform placed ads for major brands, including Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity, next to pro-Nazi content. The report resulted in Apple and IBM ending their advertising relationship with X, and most other major brands followed suit.
In March, Media Matters, which monitors conservative media, sued X for breach of contract over the tech oligarch suing the nonprofit in Texas, Ireland, and Singapore, alleging that X’s terms of service required legal action to be filed in San Francisco. The organization called Musk’s actions “a vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism.”
Media Matters alleges that Musk’s lawsuits have cost the organization millions of dollars and led to employee layoffs.
“X’s worldwide campaign of intimidation seeks to punish Media Matters for exercising its core First Amendment rights on a matter of public importance,” the lawsuit states. “This Court should stop X’s antics and enforce the forum selection clause that X itself drafted.”
If Musk’s lawsuits proceed against Media Matters, they could open up X to the legal discovery process and expose internal communications within the company over how it handled hateful content and whether it knew about failed safeguards against brand advertisements appearing next to such content.
Now, though, Musk not only has his pending lawsuits to bleed the nonprofit organization but also the power of a government agency investigation. All of this will help the world’s richest man silence media criticism of how his social media platform has helped racism, antisemitism, and other hateful content proliferate around the world.
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