Matthew L. Schafer

Matthew Schafer is Vice President, Assistant General Counsel, Litigation for Paramount Global. He handles content litigation across Paramount subsidiaries like CBS News, Showtime, and Simon & Schuster, with a focus on defamation, invasion of privacy, and copyright claims, as well as subpoenas for newsgathering material.

He also teaches media law at Fordham University School of Law and regularly writes on the history of press freedom in the United States with his articles published in law reviews around the country and in the popular press.

Previously, he was newsroom counsel at BuzzFeed News. There, he advised teams that broke the news that R. Kelly was holding women in an abusive “cult,” that released thousands of secret records of misconduct at the NYPD, and that cataloged suspected Russian-linked assassinations on UK soil, for which BuzzFeed News was a Pulitzer finalist.

Matt began his career at the litigation boutique Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, where he defended news organizations against content claims and argued in favor of greater transparency in judicial proceedings, including in the military commissions at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University, his master in mass communication from Louisiana State University, and his bachelor of science in media studies from the University of Illinois.

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