The so-called elite criticism of Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” lawsuit against the left-wing provocateurs of Media Matters for America assumes Musk has no case because he’s Elon Musk — the EV maker, entrepreneur and social media troll who recently gave credence to the semi-racist rantings of some rando X user.
I actually have to admit that I at times have sympathy for the Elon-skeptic crowd, having covered his weirdness for therefore long.
Recall the time he tweeted that he had a deal to take his then-struggling EV maker, Tesla, private at a price well above where it was trading.
He didn’t, and investors who bought the stock got screwed.
Then there’s the weirdness of his 2022 on-again, off-again purchase of Twitter (renamed X), which we don’t have space to get into.
OK, “crazy Elon” has got some skeletons — although he’s not running a struggling EV maker but one so successful that he’s the world’s richest man.
And he has rightfully vowed to squeeze the left-wing censorship out of X.
It’s also a big mistake to let his past performances render a final judgment on his claims against MMA since the judge in (conservative) Texas who might be hearing the case won’t, and the case ain’t that weak, my legal sources say.
The crux is that Media Matters manufactured a hit job against Musk for political reasons, concocting a “scandal” that major firms recurrently find their X ads next to among the most vile stuff on the platform.
Musk’s legal team says within the lawsuit — and as his advisers explained to me during a long interview last week — that their internal investigation shows MMA found out a way to manipulate X’s algorithms to produce the specified result, namely pro-Nazi user accounts recurrently appearing near ads for IBM, Apple, etc.
MMA did this by creating accounts “following” neo-Nazis and the massive advertisers almost exclusively, and repeatedly refreshing the feed until the creepy ad placement was achieved.
The lawsuit alleges you would like to do something on the extent of NBC’s notorious rigging of GM’s trucks so that they would explode as in the event that they were unsafe — the network settled that case for a undisclosed sum of cash and an apology to the automaker — or cops planting drugs on someone suspected of being a dealer, to achieve what Media Matters suggested is commonplace on X.
Damaging allegations
In other words, a lot of fakery is X’s contention.
What’s real, X’s people tell me, is the Media Matters story has been damaging.
Advertisers are actually boycotting and X is feverishly working to get them back, though there are not any guarantees.
So are my sources saying Elon’s case is a straightforward win?
Not even close.
At the center of the case is defamation, which is at all times a heavy lift.
But they do like Musk’s odds in making Media Matters’ life a living hell if the suit survives the inevitable motion to dismiss.
Media Matters during discovery could possibly be forced to make significant disclosures on its reporting process and the sources of its funding.
And if Musk wins — the case is being heard in Texas — you may definitely see him in search of a Hulk Hogan/Gawker-type settlement to put Media Matters out of business once and for all.
I qualify all that with the word “if” because I don’t have any way of knowing whether what’s within the lawsuit isn’t just a few hyped version of the reality.
Also, Musk and X aren’t explicitly denying that MMA found Nazi content next to those ads, just that you’ve gotten to exit of your way to find it.
The slander is in Media Matters suggesting the standard user experience on X is a far-right hellscape.
Media Matters for America didn’t return my call and email for comment.
Because the filing, its president, Angelo Carusone, said the case is “frivolous” and “meant to bully X’s critics into silence.
Media Matters stands behind its reporting and appears forward to winning in court.”
But here’s where things get dicey for the organization.
Musk’s lawyers know they’re on the hook for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
And where is MMA’s rebuttal to Musk’s important point: that it created the user experience it’s deploring?
Carusone hasn’t said, at the very least not yet.
Likewise, he’s been silent about any description of MMA’s methodology about the way it got here to its conclusion that Musk’s “X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content.”
All major news organizations depend on libel lawyers and those I do know (I’ve been libel-edited a whole lot of times) would demand a CYA (cover your behind) disclosure on how such an explosive conclusion was reached.
Plus, MMA isn’t some neutral observer.
It’s going after Musk prefer it does other outlets it considers deviant (i.e., non-woke and conservative), looking to gin up bad press that leads to ad boycotts as its “research” gets pushed through to fellow travelers within the mainstream media.
You might see how a judge may not like how Media Matters allegedly began backward in its reporting, as X says, to produce its conclusion.
That’s once you start chipping away on the hurdles for committing libel, showing that Media Matters has an ax to grind that’s so big, it recklessly disregarded the reality, my lawyer sources say.
Yes, the chances are that Musk is probably going to lose his case in the long term, my sources say.
Media Matters has funding to match Musk’s $200 billion-plus in net price (aka George Soros money).
But as my legal sources indicate, the case could possibly be costly on many levels, totally exposing Media Matters’ potentially unethical methods to achieving its left-wing political agenda, and the idiocy of mainstream reporters for blindly following its “reporting.”