Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has decided to terminate his investigation into Media Matters for America regarding its 2023 report, which claimed that advertisements from major brands were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content on X, previously known as Twitter.
In court documents filed on Thursday, the attorney general's office stated that it found no evidence indicating that Media Matters had breached Missouri law.
Bailey initiated his investigation shortly after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a similar inquiry. These probes coincided with a lawsuit filed by X against Media Matters, in which X alleged that the organization had "manipulated" its algorithms to "circumvent safeguards and generate images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts next to racist, inflammatory content."
Media Matters responded by filing lawsuits to block the investigations by both attorneys general, asserting that these actions were intended to suppress the watchdog's reporting, which is safeguarded by the First Amendment.
In the previous year, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an order for both Missouri and Texas to cease their investigations. Both Paxton and Bailey appealed these rulings to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Thursday, Bailey formally withdrew his appeal. Meanwhile, the appellate court heard arguments regarding Paxton's appeal in November and has yet to deliver a ruling.
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