Media Matters for America, a progressive activist group, appears to have accidentally included information about its top donors in a recent public filing.
According to a confidential donor list (
pdf), first published by the Washington Free Beacon, some of the largest Democratic contributors in the country are providing financial support to the organization.
Since Media Matters is a charitable organization, it is not compelled to reveal its funders to the general public. However, the group appears to have made a mistake and identified its five largest contributors in a public filing that was submitted to the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General in November of 2023.
According to the document, Debora Simon, a shopping center magnate headquartered in Indiana, gave $4 million to the organization Media Matters.
Ms. Simon previously
committed to do all in her power to defeat former President Donald Trump and, since 2018, has contributed $53 million to Democratic politicians and organizations.
The organization also received $1.75 million from Joshua Bekenstein, co-chairman of Bain Capital, and his wife, Anita Bekenstein, who are both
frequent contributors to Democratic super PACs, as reported by Open Secrets.
The list, which includes a note stating that it is “not open for public inspection,” also identifies the private foundation of gay rights activist Tim Gill as a significant supporter of Media Matters.
Mr. Gill is well-known for his
collaboration with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat. Additionally, the Stephen Silberstein Foundation and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation were revealed by Media Matters to be among the most significant contributors contained on the list.
The donor list of Media Matters is the most recent indication that the so-called watchdog organization has partisan leanings.
Media Matters was established in 2004 by David Brock, a supporter of the Bill Clinton administration. The organization was granted tax-exempt status after it made a claim to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it would uncover and correct conservative disinformation in the news by providing what they termed a “full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts.”
According to the New Republic, the organization
abandoned its appearance of objectivity in 2016 when it made the decision to back Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency.
In the year 2022, Media Matters was successful in raising $16.5 million, which it then utilized to report on conservative groups and compensate its top executives, among other things.
In recent years, Media Matters has been concentrating its efforts on coordinating advertising boycotts directed against Fox News and other media sites the group considers to be inequitable in its reporting.
According to their
website, the group “posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media.”
Additionally, in November, the charity targeted Elon Musk, a tech billionaire and owner of X, previously Twitter. The report claimed that the social media network provided advertisements adjacent to content that promoted extremist views, such as supporting Adolf Hitler. The findings (
pdf) were subsequently utilized by Media Matters in order to exert pressure on large advertisers such as IBM and Comcast to immediately cease advertising on X.
In response, X filed a
lawsuit for defamation, alleging that Media Matters had modified its algorithms in order to obtain the results, which it referred to as “manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.”
The defamation suit called the move an attempt to limit freedom of speech and mislead advertisers, according to the social media platform, which noted that the piece “completely misrepresented the real user experience on X.”
“X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk
stated in a Nov. 19 response. “Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them.”
Media Matters did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.
