In the epilogue to his insightful Collision of Power, former Washington Post editor Marty Baron argued in 2023 that “the legacy media’s legal strategy deserves a rethink.”

Baron imagined a day when news organizations would need to step outside the confines of traditional journalistic instincts and fight back against the near-constant attacks on our integrity. Those attacks have come from forces who wish to dehumanize us as people and delegitimize the important work that journalists do every day in defense of democratic norms.

“Those who smear us find comfort in the expectation that, while we might complain, we’re unlikely to sue. We have rendered ourselves sitting ducks for slander,” Baron wrote.

He continued, “I don’t want mainstream journalists to behave like warriors in the practice of their craft, but neither do I want us to suffer attacks on our character without fighting back. Winning in the court of public opinion may require, at times, going to court.”

As far as I can tell, two years later, no one has taken that bold proposition and developed a realistic proposal for pursuing such defensive strategies.

But 2026 may be the year that we are forced to admit that, in an age of overwhelming misinformation and disinformation, our conservative journalistic instincts have failed us.

In some cases, albeit rarely, criminal laws may provide a tool to fend off the harassment journalists increasingly face today in America. Even more critically, perhaps 2026 will be the year for serious conversations about how we can deploy the same libel laws that have been used to attack journalists, this time in defense of our work.

Think of it as the Dominion Voting System strategy for journalism.

For me, this is not a merely theoretical proposition; I come to the conversation with the scars of two years of personal attacks from white supremacists, QAnon-deluded figures, Christian nationalists, and other political extremists who have made me a target for their wrath.

During that time, in retaliation for my reporting on extremism, I have been falsely accused in online comments and Rumble podcasts of being a pedophile or perhaps providing cover for a network of Satanic pedophiles. It has been falsely suggested that I might be a member of organized crime, that my name “keeps coming up” in investigations of multiple murders in the counties surrounding my home in Nashville.

Even Owen Shroyer, who was found to be liable for his defamation of a Sandy Hook Elementary family, used his InfoWars program to pontificate on a guest’s bogus claim that I had stated that child trafficking was just a conspiracy theory. “Who would want you to think that a child trafficking network is a conspiracy theory?” Shroyer asked, quickly providing his own possible explanation. “Well, you know, the people who are trafficking children, probably, are the ones that would want you to think that that’s a conspiracy theory.”

And Shroyer had other questions about me and the illicit connections he imagined.

“We know the cartels have operations all over the place here in America,” he continued. “Are we thinking cartels in the media? Cartels have people in the media now?”

And that wasn’t even the worst of it. It has been falsely hinted, more than once by the targets of my investigation, that I may have murdered my late wife, who died in January 2016 after a lengthy battle with alcoholism. An anonymous neo-Nazi troll recently imagined that my wife’s death might be tied to her discovery that I had sexually molested our son. After all that my now-adult son and I endured from the pain of loving someone with an addiction, it seems especially disgusting that I feel the need to state, for the record, that such accusations are patently false. It is the sort of libelous falsehood designed for the sole purpose of intimidation.

Such attacks chip away at public perceptions of journalism as a whole, but the emotional burden weighs most heavily upon journalists like me who are on the front lines.

Even faced with such horrific attacks, developing an effective strategy is complicated. Not only have libel cases been traditionally difficult for public figures to win (and we certainly would not want a defensive strategy to lead to the weakening of protections so vital for legitimate journalism), there is the additional concern that libel lawsuits by journalists could inadvertently open our work product to discovery. On top of that, news organizations are more cash-strapped than ever and, as we know from our experiences as defendants, libel litigation can be incredibly expensive. In many cases, the characters making such outlandish claims are unlikely to have deep pockets that might one day result in recoupment of those legal fees.

Perhaps one of the non-profits that works in defense of democracy and/or freedom of the press would be willing to take the lead in developing a pilot program to target the worst offenders to send a message to others who wish to tear down journalists and journalism. Perhaps a civic-minded benefactor would be willing to fund such an initiative so that news organizations are not forced to weigh such novel approaches against the increasing challenge of keeping reporters and editors on the payroll.

In 2017, as a board member for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), I spearheaded an effort to create the Don Bolles Medal. Named after the famed Arizona Republic reporter who was assassinated in 1976, it honors investigative journalists “who have exhibited extraordinary courage in standing up against intimidation or efforts to suppress the truth about matters of public importance.”

Recognition of such journalistic heroism is an important response, but it is not enough for the challenges that we face today in America.

May 2026 be the year that we send a message that horrifically false attacks on journalists and journalism will not go unanswered.

Phil Williams is chief investigative reporter for WTVF-NewsChannel 5 in Nashville.