Ozy Media’s Swift Collapse Followed a Flurry of Resignations and Accusations

After years of hyping itself as a major media player, Ozy finally became the talk of the industry in recent days—albeit for all the wrong reasons. And as the working week wrapped up Friday, The New York Times, which first dropped a bombshell Sunday night, reported that Ozy Media announced it was shutting down. “At Ozy, we have been blessed with a remarkable team of dedicated staff,” the company’s board of directors said in a statement. “Many of them are world-class journalists and experienced professionals to whom we owe tremendous gratitude and who are wonderful colleagues. It is therefore with the heaviest of hearts that we must announce today that we are closing Ozy’s doors.”

The company’s swift collapse unfurled with a flurry of resignations, revelations, and accusations. Just hours before Friday’s announcement, Ozy CEO and cofounder Carlos Watson had resigned as a corporate director of NPR. Watson’s relinquishing his NPR title comes a day after Ozy Media chairman Marc Lasry, a hedge-fund billionaire and the co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, resigned after leading Ozy’s operations for just about three weeks. “I believe that going forward Ozy requires experience in areas like crisis management and investigations, where I do not have particular expertise,” Lasry stated. And prior to the Lasry news it was Katty Kay, a former BBC anchor and one of Ozy’s biggest stars, announcing that she was departing the media brand, writing on Twitter that her exit was due to the “serious and deeply troubling” allegations made against Ozy in The New York Times. 

Ozy’s P.R. nightmare has only worsened since Sunday’s Times story, which revealed that the company’s chief operating officer, Samir Rao, allegedly impersonated a YouTube executive during a call with Goldman Sachs investors to claim that Ozy’s content on the video-sharing site was doing exceptionally well. Rao, who might have committed securities fraud, was initially defended by both Lasry, who described the incident as an “unfortunate one-time event,” and Watson, who said Rao had suffered “a very personal mental health issue.” Times media columnist Ben Smith, who wrote the initial story, followed up Thursday with claims from Brad Bessey, former executive producer of The Carlos Watson Show, that the Ozy team misled staff and guests about where the program would air. “You are playing a dangerous game with the truth,” Bessey wrote in a farewell email to Watson and Rao. An Ozy spokesperson did not reply to the Times’s request for comment.

Prior to Ozy Media being shuttered on Friday afternoon, a number of major companies suspended their ad partnerships, and Rao, who announced “a leave of absence pending the results of the investigation,” according to the board, was not the only high-ranking Ozy staffer under scrutiny for claims about the company’s performance. In 2019, Watson referred to the now departed Lasry as a “lead investor” in a round of funding worth $35 million, but Lasry’s investment reportedly amounted to just $1 million, according to Axios. And Sharon Osbourne this week accused Watson of lying about her and husband Ozzy Osbourne investing in the company. “This guy is the biggest shyster I have ever seen in my life,” she told CNBC. An Ozy Media spokesperson did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

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