Below is my column in the Hill on the victory of Elon Musk last week against the liberal media outlet, Media Matters. This follows similar recent victories by others against CNN and the New York Times to clear paths to trials. For those who have embraced advocacy journalism as the new model for media, a bill is coming due in the form of defamation and disparagement lawsuits.
Here is the column:
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, 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 of 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 pools 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).
As corrupt as the journalism profession at large has become regarding it’s core mission of truth, I don’t understand why public broadcasting can ignore the law that created it which says, “…with strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature” — Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. I’d like to know why that isn’t applicable.
Excellent article. Good work, Jonathan.
Having a BS in news journalism, I find advocacy journalism abhorrent. Yes, we were taught the opposite of this,
“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.” The problem with it is without facts, one cannot form an opinion because the reader/listener is only getting opinion. If it’s disguised as truth, and often is, it makes it worse. Instead of an informed citizenry, you get an indoctrinated one.
Those J schools should be held accountable for their defective product that has caused irreparable harm to individuals and society in general.
No mention of Mike Adam’s lawsuit in your blog.
Why do all the ‘established’ media pundits suck eLawns staff so much?
https://brighteon.social/@HealthRanger/113069996977953278
” we build and grow free speech platforms and new public education…… We’re also spending huge dollars on our free speech lawsuit against the federal government, which was filed on Memorial Day.”
Nor have I heard a PEEP about how Mike was the first significant victim of the censorship emperium.
I guess it won’t motivate the shadow book buyers /s
There was an interesting post by Musk yesterday, he said that a couple of people he knew had been seeing a significant increase in toxic content in their feeds, when he investigated, he found that they had been sharing toxic content with each other to comment on it. It turns out that the X ‘algorithm’ interprets sharing something as a desire to see more like that. So the more toxic content they shared, the more they were shown.
In my mind, this has very interesting implications for all the companies who are searching twitter, hoping to find toxic content. The fact that they are searching for it and highlighting it means that they are telling the system that they want more of it, and it’s giving them more.
This makes their reports about how toxic X is meaningless. (or a self-fulfilling prophecy)
OT
Letter to Benjamin Netanyahu
Make a deal with the devil. Do whatever he wants. Promise him everything. Get all the hostages back. Then kill the devil and all of his minions. That’s how you deal with the devil. It sounds impossible because it is impossible to deal with the devil without dealing like the devil.
Mr. Turley, I follow your work and admire it, but a simple request: PLEASE do not spell out the f-word and other hardcore curse words in quotes or for yourself. (Even more so, please do not quote people using God’s name-in-vain. Just indicating that they did so will suffice.) Just because the person being quoted has lowered himself or herself to such language doesn’t mean you should too, even if only in a quote. Thank you.
Please, never forget to mention that not only Steve Scalise was seriously injured in the attack on the Republican Congressional baseball practice, but that young Matt Mika was shot several times and was the most seriously injured of all those wounded that morning. He came within minutes of dying.
Unfortunately, these left-wing media outlets mostly reside in states where they are protected by jury pools inclined to be favorable to them. The same holds for left-wing politicians and bureaucrats in D. C. and New York, where the law is, de facto, no more objective than the media.
RIDICULOUS!
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
If you want your country back, you’re going to have to take it.
____________________________________________________________________
“It’s time to stop talkin’ and start chalkin’!”
– Chick Hearn, Lakers Sportscaster
_____________________________________
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– American Founders, Declaration of Independence, 1776
That’s All, Folks!
Jonathan: There are a number of issues you did not discuss about Elon Musk’s SLAPP lawsuit against Media Matters. Here are a few:
First, although Judge O’Connor granted jurisdiction to impose his preliminary injunction that may well be reversed on appeal. Why? Because neither MM nor X are based in Texas. X is still headquarter in California while MM is based in DC. Musk filed his lawsuit in Texas because, although Texas does have a anti-SLAPP statute, the 5th Circuit previously ruled the law does not apply in federal courts within its jurisdiction. In California where Musk should have sued the 9th Circuit would have applied the state’s anti-SLAPP law and dismissed the case. That’s why Musk chose Texas–a case of forum shopping to get a more favorable ruling.
Second, Musk doesn’t claim in his lawsuit that MM’s reporting was inaccurate. Although the suit is laced with claims of “defamation”, the complaint is based on “business disparagement” and “interference with contract”. That’s going to be hard to prove. What MM did was follow neo-Nazi and antisemitic content and then reporting when X placed ads next to the hate speech content. If that reporting cause advertisers to make independent decisions to stop advertising on X that would not support Musk’s complaint.
Third, Judge O’Connor may have a conflict of interest. NPR reports that O’Connor holds between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of Tesla stock. That alone should have caused O’Connor to recuse himself from the case.
Fourth, in a related case US District Judge Amit Mehta just granted a preliminary injunction against Missouri’s AG Andrew Bailey who was trying to investigate MM about its same reporting about X. Mehta found that “Missouri’s interest in enforcing its consumer protection laws must give way when a state actor [AG Bailey] uses them to retaliate against a media organization for protected speech”.
Mehta also noted in his opinion that there was a political motive behind Bailey’s lawsuit. After MM published its piece on 11/16/23 an ally of DJT, Stephen Miller, “sent a tweet implicitly calling for state attorneys generals to investigate Media Matters. Within hours, Defendant Bailey responded that [his] team is looking into the matter”. Earlier this year Mehta granted an injunction to stop Texas’ AG Paxton’s similar lawsuit against MM.
It’s pretty clear that Musk is using SLAPP lawsuits to try to silence the media that is pointing out the dark underbelly of X where Musk promotes neo-Nazi propaganda and other hate speech. And he is coordinating with AGs in Missouri and Texas to do that. Only in Texas has Musk found an ally in Judge O’Connor.
The remarkable thing is that you relish the idea that Musk, as “the world’s richest man” has a right to try to silence his critics. As a “free speech absolutist”, along with Musk, how do you reconcile that with the requirements of the First Amendment?
Dennis–Thanks. Another criticism of Turley, who, as a law professor, knows that the faithful disciples don’t know any better is that this piece, which involves merely surviving a pretrial motion–is a far cry from prevailing at trial. Turley makes it sound like Musk has “won” already–that he has achieved some landmark “victory” over the evil “left media”, which he hasn’t, and very well may not. The same is true of Palin’s lawsuit. Ironically, Turley works for one MAGA media outlet (of several) that does nothing all day long but promote MAGA, and yet claims: “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.” Turley’s employer left journalistic standards behind a long time ago–proven by the nearly one billion dollar Smartmatic lawsuit, and not only that, but actively attacks non-MAGA media–which explains why the public has lost faith in media.
You’re a bag of hot wind.
Wow. You’re just a bag of hot wind.
Is there any discernable difference between “advocacy journalism” and propaganda?
If not, aren’t we giving undue respect to those who coined the phrase? Shouldn’t we start calling schools or colleges of journalism P-schools?
Advocacy journalism, with its rejection of objectivity, almost by definition is a sitting duck for defamation lawsuits.
This is blind, raging stupidity, and we can thank the idiot savants in America’s schools and colleges for a lot of it. They send out overeducated twits to glue themselves to paintings or write scurrilous lies to defend their bogus “narrative,” while the eggheads sit in the faculty lounge like cowards and account themselves brilliant puppet masters.
I wish we had more brave and reasonable academics like Professor Turley. It’s getting to the point you could count such men and women on one hand.
Maybe we can find some way to sue academia as codefendants. Bring lawfare into the faculty lounge. Cut their federal funding. Consequences tend to concentrate the mind beautifully.
These “twits” are not overeducated. They have been sent to “Centers of Education” and just stuffed with the most recent drivel the progressives have thought up and then they brainlessly repeat it. Education means enlightenment and understanding as the real world is revealed to you. Then you can learn how to think and make decisions based on your new reasoning skills and weigh the varying realities of the world and then find the way that best suits you. That is education. But it also has to be married to experience, which can be shocking to your views of the world and sometimes actually improves your understanding of reality.
Perhaps “mal-educated.” We need to make that a word.
Hear! Hear! Diogenes RULES!