MSNBC Contributor Katty Kay Resigns From Ozy Over ‘Deeply Troubling’ Allegations Against Fledgling Media Company

MSNBC contributor Katty Kay announced Wednesday she was resigning from Ozy Media after just four months in the wake of allegations that include fraud engulfing the company.

“Yesterday morning I handed in my resignation to Ozy Media,” Kay wrote in a morning note posted on social media. “I was looking forward to working with the talented young reporters but I did not expect this!”

Noting she left the BBC to join the company, Kay said new allegations about its management team and practices “caught me by surprise, are serious and deeply troubling,” adding, “I had no choice but to end my relationship with the company.”

The resignation comes two days after a New York Times exposé indicated the FBI was looking into allegations that Ozy co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive in February in an effort to sell the company to Goldman Sachs. The company nonetheless retained Rao, attributing the incident to a “mental health crisis.”

The eight-year-old company claimed 50 million unique monthly visitors in 2019, though Comscore data suggests it received less than a tenth of that figure. Comscore data suggested monthly visitors had fallen to less than half a million as of 2021.

Ozy’s board said Tuesday the report prompted it to hire a law firm to investigate its “business activities.”

Kay, a British journalist, worked for the BBC from 1990 until May of this year, when she announced she was leaving to join Ozy.