LOS ANGELES- As Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that he had ordered his office to look into Media Matters for America over “allegedly fraudulent solicitation of donations,” the conflict over the coverage of billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X ( previously Twitter ) by a progressive media watchdog organization grew more heated.
We have reason to believe that Media Matters defrauded Settlers of their funds in order to deceive ads into leaving X, the country’s final program for free speech, according to a media release. We wo n’t allow Missourians to be taken advantage of in the process, according to Bailey. Radicals are trying to kill Twitter because they have no control over it. ” I’m fighting to prevent liberal tyrants disguising themselves as news organizations from influencing the market to obliterate free speech.”
Attorneys for the billionaire’s X company filed a lawsuit against Media Matters and its analytical scholar, journalist Eric Hananoki, last month in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth over an investigation report that reported Nazi information had run alongside advertisements from big corporations on the x app platform.
The Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on November 20 that his business had started looking into the Washington, D.C. non-profit, which coincided with the timing of the X complaint.
In his press release, Paxton stated that” we are closely examining the issue to ensure that the government has not been deceived by the methods of radical left-wing businesses who would like nothing more than to restrict freedom by reducing participation in public square.”
President of Media Matters Angelo Carusone stated that the non-profit may justify itself in response to Musk’s X lawsuit. This pointless legal action is intended to intimidate X’s detractors into submission. He stated in a statement that” Media Matters stands behind its monitoring and looks forward to winning in judge.”
Hananoki, the author of the article, was also named as a plaintiff in the complaint. When asked for reply, Hananoki did not respond right away.
NBC News reported late Tuesday day:
Late on Monday, Media Matters for America filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, claiming that when he launched an investigation into the company over its exposure to Elon Musk’s X game last month, Texas violated the First Amendment and slowed down its work.
According to Media Matters, Paxton’s investigation was an illegal form of retaliation meant to condemn it for stories it reported that claimed significant advertising campaigns were running alongside white nationalist information on X.
The reports caused problems for Musk and X and, it seems, helped spur a huge wave of social media platform pullouts by publishers.
Additionally, NBC News reported:
On November 21, Paxton’s business requested” a broad swath of files” related to its monitoring in a letter to Media Matters. The complaint claims that the demand is intrusive because some Media Matters writers and experts “have pared back monitoring and submitting, especially on any topics that could be perceived as relating to the Paxton analysis.”
According to the lawsuit,” These writers and experts are even aware that Media Matters ‘ editorial staff has been forced to withhold stories about X and Musk according to these problems.”
Additionally, it was stated in the complaint that Paxton has no authority over Media Matters. It claims that despite having its headquarters in Washington, it does not conduct business in Texas as required by the government’s business script.
The lawsuit claims that the Defendants ‘ speech will be further chilled if they are dragged to judge in Texas at the Attorney General Paxton’s discretion in an unidentified, acquainted, and untouched location.
Bailey writes the following in a letter that Missouri’s attorney general sent to advertising matters:
According to national and Missouri laws, this letter serves as a proper document hold see. The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has launched a probe into the possible illegal business practices of your company known as” Media Matters for America.”
As you are undoubtedly aware, Media Matters has been the subject of a federal lawsuit that makes significant claims that your company intentionally and dishonestly manipulated the engine on X ( previously known as Twitter ) through coordinated, fake habits. You did this in an effort to discredit the company and force advertisers to withdraw their support from the platform, harming free speech. The complaint claims that you misled the public by implying that border, extremist content frequently appears alongside content from commercial advertisers when, in reality, the opposite is true. You also seem to have used this planned, fictitious activity to seek generous donations from consumers all over the nation.
I have reason to believe that your company’s reported activities may include violated Missouri buyer protection laws, including those that forbid nonprofit organizations from raising money under false pretenses, he continued. For instance, Mo. Rev. . Stat. 407.020.1. If true, Media Matters ‘ activities have hindered free speech by focusing on a social media platform that is specifically pro-free conversation in an effort to damage it financially while defrauding Missourians, which worries me the most.
” You are now instructed to keep all information pertaining to your alleged attempt to engage in organized, dishonest behaviour on social media platforms in order to make false statements that were used to solicit generous contributions under fake pretenses.”
A spokeswoman for Media Matters informed the Blade that the non-profit had no comment at this time in response to an email asking for opinion on the letter from the Missouri Attorney General.
The petition comes as Musk’s social media platform has suffered significant marketing costs due to businesses that are dissatisfied with the growth of unrestricted radical right-wing viewpoints, hate speech, and antisemitism/Islamophobia, which has significantly increased in the LGBTQ+ area and religious minority.
Top plan reporter for Ars Technica, a publication that covers the tech sector, semiconductor industry, AI, and cryptocurrencies, Ashley Belanger is based in Chicago.
More than 100 major brands, including Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber, have stopped marketing, while “dozens” more are considering pausing advertising on the program, according to internal X sales staff records reviewed by The New York Times.
According to Bloomberg News:
People with knowledge of the situation estimate that Elon Musk’s X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, will bring in about$ 2.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2023, a significant decline from previous years.
A person familiar with the statistics claims that X earned slightly more than$ 600 million in advertising revenue in each of its first three quarters of the year and predicts a similar performance during the current period. In 2022, that amounts to more than$ 1 billion per quarter.
Advertisers ‘ dissatisfaction with how X is handling content moderation under Musk, and in particular the new manager’s messages that heighten racist and other extremist views, are more clearly illustrated by the previously unidentified sales figures.
In their lawsuit against Media Matters, Musk’s prosecutors argued that the Washington-based non-profit organization had fabricated an article about X, claiming the investigating did not accurately reflect what most consumers see.
According to the lawsuit,” Media Mattersknowingly and deliberately manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers ‘ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform alongside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist border content, and therefore portrayed these made images as if they were what typical people on the platform were experiencing,”
According to the lawsuit, Media Matters “intentionally interfered with deals” between X and its publishers. Additionally, according to the lawsuit, the post disparaged X with untruthful claims, doing so” clearly with hate, well aware of their falsity.” Also, Media Matters had illegally gotten involved in business affairs with the intention of hurting the company’s advertising sales.
NBC News, Bloomberg, and Ars Technica also provided extra monitoring.
Related:
Fox News, a right-wing media outlet, reported that Elon Musk engages in conflict with the media regulator group” GO TO HELL.”
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