Matthew L. Schafer is Vice President, Assistant General Counsel, Litigation for Paramount Global. He handles litigation across its subsidiaries like CBS News, CBS Local TV Stations, Showtime, and Simon & Schuster, with a focus on defamation and privacy claims. He was a part of the teams that defeated back-to-back efforts by the Trump family and the U.S. Government to prevent publication of two books critical of the Administration, Too Much and Never Enough and The Room Where It Happened.
Matt also teaches media law at Fordham University School of Law and regularly writes on the history of press freedom in common law jurisdictions with his articles published by law reviews around the country, as well as in the popular press.
Previously, he was newsroom counsel at BuzzFeed News, where he advised its international newsrooms that broke the news that R. Kelly was holding women in an abusive “cult,” that detailed vast international money laundering schemes, and that cataloged suspected Russian-linked assassinations on UK soil, for which BuzzFeed News was a Pulitzer finalist.
He began his career at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, the country's preeminent First Amendment litigation firm. There, he defended news organizations in defamation cases, opposed efforts to obtain journalists' newsgathering materials, and advocated for greater transparency in government, including greater press access to the 9/11 military commissions at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.