Media Matters, Left-Wing Watchdog and Advertising Boycott Champions, Announce Mass Layoffs
Conservatives have their schadenfreude moment, as organization that called for their cancelation lays off a large part of their workforce.
Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America, the left-wing media watchdog that catalogued various supposed offences by right-wing media personalities for decades and called for their cancellations and advertisers to block them, laid off over a dozen staffers on Thursday. Former employees took to X, a favorite target of theirs, to announce they had been fired, leading to celebrations in online conservative circles.
Several of those affected blamed “far-right billionaires” who attack Media Matters “with armies of lawyers” because “they know how effective our work is, and it terrifies them (him)”. This sentiment mirrors Media Matters president Angelo Carusone’s response after Elon Musk filed a defamation suit against the organization in November, alleging they had manipulated a report claiming that major corporate ads on X were being shown alongside racist content to scare off advertisers and harm X’s bottom line.
Carusone released a statement regarding the layoffs, saying, “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. Nobody does what Media Matters does. So, we’re taking this action now to ensure that we are sustainable, sturdy and successful for whatever lies ahead.”
Media Matters has long been controversial. They have been known to isolate clips of right wing media figures out of context to make them sound racist and bigoted, and launched several advertising boycott campaigns to harm conservative leaning organizations and media outlets.