Why Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters…matters

This week, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit by Elon Musk against Media Matters can move forward in what could prove a significant case not just for the liberal outlet but the entire media industry.

The decision comes at the same time as other court wins for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) against the New York Times and a Navy veteran against CNN.

For years, media organizations and journalism schools have expressly abandoned objectivity in favor of advocacy journalism. This abandonment of neutrality has coincided, unsurprisingly, with a drop in public faith in media to record lows. 

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has been lionized for declaring that “all journalism is activism.” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, similarly announced that “Objectivity has got to go.”

“J-Schools” have been teaching students for years to discard old-fashioned ideas of simply reporting facts and, as stated at the University of Texas at Austin, to “leave neutrality behind.”

In a series of interviews with more than 75 media leaders by Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this new vision of journalism. Downie explained that objectivity is viewed as a trap and reporters “feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

As the public abandons mainstream media for alternative news sources, news organizations are now facing the added costs of bias in the form of defamation and disparagement lawsuits. Media lawyers are citing protections secured by the “old media” while their clients are publicly espousing their intention to frame the news to advance political and social agendas.

CNN, for example, is now facing a trial in a lawsuit by Navy veteran Zachary Young, the subject of an alleged hit piece over his work to extract endangered people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. In a Nov. 11, 2021, segment on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” the host tells his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”

Marquardt named Young and his company in claiming that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee the country.

Discovery revealed how Marquardt said that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” That sentiment was echoed by other CNN staff. In allowing the case to go to trial, a judge found not just evidence of actual malice by CNN but grounds for potential punitive damages.

Likewise, Palin recently won a major appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which found that Palin was denied a fair trial in a case against the New York Times. 

In 2017, liberal activist and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) supporter James T. Hodgkinson attempted to massacre Republican members of Congress on a baseball diamond, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). The New York Times, eager to shift the narrative, ran an editorial suggesting that Palin had inspired or incited Jared Loughner’s 2011 shooting of then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

The Times’ editors stated that SarahPAC, Palin’s political action committee, had posted a graphic that put a crosshair on a U.S. map representing Giffords’ district before she was shot, suggesting that this was direct incitement to violence. In reality, Palin’s graphic “targeting” about 20 vulnerable House Democrats all across the country is typical of graphics used in political campaigns by both parties for many decades. No evidence has ever been offered that Giffords’ deranged shooter even saw it.

But Musk’s lawsuit may be the most defining for our age of advocacy journalism. He is suing Media Matters, the left-wing outlet founded by David Brock, whom Time described as “one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party.”

Although Brock is no longer with the site, Media Matters has long been accused as being a weaponized media outlet for the left. After Musk dismantled the censorship system at Twitter, he became something of an obsession for Media Matters, which targeted his revenue sources.

The outlet ran a report suggesting that advertisements of major corporations were being posted next to pro-Nazi posts or otherwise hateful content on the platform. As I discuss in my new book, this effort mirrored similar moves by the anti-free speech movement against Musk to force him to restore censorship systems.

Companies including Apple, IBM, Comcast and Lionsgate Entertainment quickly joined the effective boycott to squeeze Musk. 

The problem is that it is hard to squeeze the world’s richest man financially. Musk told the companies to pound sand and told his lawyers to file suit. 

The allegations in the lawsuit read like a textbook on advocacy journalism. Media Matters is accused of knowingly misrepresenting the real user experience by manipulating the algorithms to produce the pairing alleged in its story.

The complaint accuses Media Matters of running its manipulation to produce extremely unlikely pairings, such that one toxic match appeared for “only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters.” In other words, the organization wanted to write a hit piece connecting X to pro-Nazi material and proceeded to artificially create pairings between that material and corporate advertisements. It then ran the story as news.

Indeed, two defendant employees of Media Matters did not deny that they were aware of the alleged manipulation and that they were seeking to poison the well for advertisers in order to drain advertising revenues for X. 

Although the media covered another judge blocking an effort by state officials to sue Media Matters over the anti-Musk effort, there has been comparably less coverage of the green light for the lawsuit in Texas.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas rejected an effort to dismiss the case on jurisdictional and other grounds.  Musk will be able to continue his claims of tortious interference with existing contracts, business disparagement and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage. 

Musk is also suing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which also targeted advertisers to choke off targeted sites. 

Not surprisingly, although the media has heralded lawsuits like the one by Dominion Voting System against Fox News (which led to a large settlement), they are overwhelmingly hostile toward the Musk lawsuits. 

It is not hard to see why. The Media Matters lawsuit directly challenges the ability of media outlets to create false narratives to advance a political agenda. As with the CNN and New York Times cases, it can expose how the media first decides on a conclusion and then frames or even invents the facts to support it.

While rejecting the longstanding principles of journalism such as objectivity, these media outlets are citing the cases and defenses secured by those now-outdated media organizations. They want to be advocates, but they also want to be protected as journalists. 

These cases still face tough challenges, including challenging jury polls in places like New York. However, they are exposing the bias that now characterizes much of American journalism.

In the age of advocacy journalism, a bill has come due. That is why Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters . . . well . . . matters.

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).