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Nashville NewsChannel 5 Chief Investigative Reporter Phil Williams is one of the most highly acclaimed investigative journalists in America.
He has been recognized with journalism’s most prestigious honors on multiple occasions throughout his 40-year career. He is a five-time recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award and a five-time recipient of the duPont Columbia Award, both considered broadcasting’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
He joins us on The Signal for Local News Day to discuss the importance of local media, his own pro-democracy reporting, and why for the last few years he and his team have refused to surrender to the fascist mob and continue to center their work on investigating and reporting about hate groups and political extremists looking to seize power and grow their influence in Tennessee.
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Transcript edited by Alexa Schnur.
Hi Phil. Happy Local News Day and welcome to “The Signal.”
Thanks, it’s great to be here.
Can you first tell readers about your path to becoming a journalist?
Well, I’m one of those people that—I guess I always wanted to be a journalist. I’m a child of Watergate, so I think that really kind of shaped my journey. I started out in print journalism and after about six, seven years moved to broadcast journalism.
And that was always in Tennessee?
My first job out of college, I was at Florida Today, the newspaper in central Florida. And then after about a year and a half, I came back to my home state of Tennessee, worked at the Tennessean newspaper for about six years and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Then that led to me being recruited to go into broadcast.
Journalism and local news can do a lot of things, but I believe that democracy is its most important beat. That can be reporting on elected officials’ actions and votes, in legislative bodies—from the school board to the township, from the county to the state capital. Or, it can also mean reporting on threats to our democracy.
When faced with extremism, some community news outlets choose to turn their heads or shy away, maybe take a “see no evil, hear no evil, report no evil” approach. If you’re giving them the benefit of the doubt, they would suggest it’s because they don’t want to give these people attention. You know, we’ve seen this in Bucks County with the local daily newspaper in the past. But you and your team, you’ve taken the opposite approach, believing that sunlight is the best disinfectant when confronting extremism. Why is it best to shine a light on bad actors like neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militias, Christian nationalists, and others when they assert themselves locally?
Well, for most of my career, I actually had the mindset that you described initially there, as being, Don’t give them oxygen. They’re the “crazies”. Just ignore them and they’ll go away. I think what we have found out is that these movements already have oxygen. The analogy that I give is: it’s like a brush fire that we chose to ignore until it became a raging wildfire. So I think our thinking was just completely wrong, especially in the age of social media, when these ideas can grow.
I mean, early in my career, yeah. It was possible to ignore these groups and count on the fact that they probably were not going to get traction. But we’re in a completely different environment these days. If we ignore them, they still have the potential to get traction. So the alternative is to shine a light on these movements and to reveal them for who they really are. Because sometimes these groups will put a pretty face on their evil ideas. And it’s really important for journalists to get past the veneer and to show these groups for who they really are; to show their ideas and reveal their ideas at the rawest. So that, when the public hears about, for example, immigration— my latest reporting has been: for some of these groups, it was never really about illegal immigration. That was only a starting point. They want re-migration, which is to deport people of color who may have even become citizens over the last few decades.
READ: In Far Right’s Growing ‘Remigration’ Talk, Echoes of KKK America
So it’s about shining a light on these movements that are growing, whether we pay attention or not.
How has this been received by your audience, especially in the beginning when maybe they weren’t used to seeing this type of reporting?
Well, initially, my journey began with a race for mayor in an affluent community of about 70,000 people just south of Nashville: Franklin, Tennessee. You had a very telegenic MAGA candidate for mayor who was running against the establishment Republican incumbent mayor, and there was a lot of culture politics going on. Several so-called refugees from Bucks County were part of that campaign. Then, at a critical point in the campaign, a group of neo-Nazis showed up in this very affluent Republican community to provide security for that candidate.
And for me, that was a real wake-up call—that if neo-Nazis feel emboldened enough to show up in a community like this in the middle of a political race, something is happening in our country that deserves attention. And at that time, I think the audience really appreciated that coverage. And that community had a record voter turnout and that candidate who was supported by the neo-Nazis was resoundingly defeated.
Now, as my coverage has continued, it began next with Q-Anon aligned officials in another small community just outside of Nashville. Then, a neo-Nazi group called the Goyim Defense League came to Nashville in July of 2024, and really created havoc on the streets. And again, I think people understood the coverage.
In October of 2024, my coverage took another turn with a group of Christian nationalists who were trying to set up a community about 90 minutes outside of Nashville. And that’s where you start to see a little more pushback, because I’m in a red state and people who are not intimately aware of these groups say, Okay, what’s the problem? You’ve got Christians wanting to have a role in government. We don’t see the problem. So that’s required me to be a little more deliberate in communicating with my office of, Okay, yes, they’re Christian, that’s fine. They believe in their country, that’s fine. But if you really look beneath the surface, here’s what they believe. They want to take away the right of women to vote, they don’t think Jews should be able to hold office. So that has required a little more persistence in communicating to an audience where a certain percentage just don’t want to hear that. You see that today even on my Facebook, especially where people just don’t get it and don’t appreciate the reporting of people that they sort of like.
Yeah, so it was that mayor’s race with Gabrielle Hanson where you first got on my radar because like you said, there was a Bucks County connection to that. A Bucks County native and former Moms for Liberty member, Erin Mazzoni—she was kind of embroiled in the whole school board wars here locally—like you said, fled Pennsylvania as a political refugee for so-called greener pastures in your neck of the woods, to try to help someone like Gabrielle Hanson get elected. Now, that didn’t happen. However, I wanted to know, do you think, had you not reported on the extremist backing of her campaign and extremist support, that she may have been elected?
Well, I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I think initially she was probably going to win, but there was just one scandal after another with her that actually predated the neo-Nazis showing up. My first dealings with Erin Mazzoni came with my first report, where, Gabrielle Hanson, her campaign had posted photos of a group of women that they claimed to be supporters. I was able to do reverse image searches and contact some of those women, and they had no idea, in some cases, who Gabrielle Hanson even was. They certainly were not supporters. Then I ended up with a most bizarre phone call with Gabrielle Hanson and Erin Mazzoni where I was told that I was infringing upon her right to tell whatever story she wanted to tell, whether it was true or not, that it was the equivalent of stalking a woman. And I think finally, Ms. Mazzoni said something to the effect of, “God was on their side and there was nothing I could do to stop that.” Then there were just all sorts of other mini scandals like that.
Ms. Hanson had a criminal history of promoting prostitution that she had never acknowledged. She claimed to have had a premonition of a school shooting in Nashville, and claimed to have told the police officer. I got the body cam video from the police officer and it was just a complete fabrication. So it was not just the neo-Nazi story, but certainly that played a significant part in her downfall.
Yeah, that was truly a bizarre conversation. I re-listened to it this morning. And they were citing some Supreme Court case like Missouri v. Biden to claim that it was their right to lie on social media.
Right, right.
So another thing I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of objectivity, which is kind of like a sacred cow within American journalism. And this notion of [including] both sides in your reporting, you seem to kind of—I don’t know if it’s too strong—but reject that when it comes to reporting on a lot of these extremist elements, whether it’s neo-Nazis, white supremacists, etc. Could you unpack that a little bit for us and explain your approach, and why these maybe antiquated notions of objectivity don’t fit within your reporting?
Well, I’ll disagree with you slightly. I do believe in objectivity if the facts are in question, if there are legitimately two sides, or if there’s a gray area where it could be this way or that way. So, yes, I’m going to say some people view it in one way, but here’s the other perspective. But my commitment is not to objectivity per se, my commitment is to the truth. So when the facts are clear, when someone is clear in their vision that they want to undermine democracy, I’m just going to tell you the way it is. So, I start first with the truth, and if there’s some question about the truth, then yeah, I’m going to give you both sides. But my commitment is to the truth, and, and if, and if someone is not telling a story that is true, if someone is trying to undermine democracy, I don’t feel an obligation to say, Well, you know, maybe they’re right. You know, maybe, maybe Hitler was right. So that’s where I kind of draw the line. I start with truth, and then go from there.
Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen this kind of weaponization of this bastardized version of objectivity kind of bleed into education. You had just mentioned Hitler; there was a school district in Texas that got into hot water because educators there were instructed that they needed to teach both sides of the Holocaust, where six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis. So, I think there is a time where maybe facts are in question and you can get in both sides, but for me, I agree with you that you don’t “both sides” fascism, right? You don’t “both sides” hate.
Yeah, you know, our country, our jobs depend on democracy. So, do I come with a pro-democracy bias? Absolutely. Because without democracy, I’m out of business. I mean, if I bring a bias to it, it’s a pro-democracy bias, it’s an anti-hate bias, and I’m okay with that.
How big is your team that you work with on these stories and who are helping you with this reporting?
Well, it’s probably a lot smaller than you think. We have on our team four reporters and two photographers, but mainly it’s myself and my photojournalist partner, Brian Staples. We’ll pull in other photojournalists as necessary, but it’s pretty small and I’m also pretty passionate about my work. I honestly probably don’t have the work-life balance that I need just because I feel so passionate about this work, especially these days.
Why do you think there’s—and I’m not really talking about where you work, but you had said your team is kind of lean. Some news stations or newspapers don’t even have what you have, and some reporters would love to have those kinds of resources. Why do you think there’s not as robust of an investment in this kind of investigative reporting? Is it just market forces? Or is it something else?
Well, number one, I think it requires a certain mindset. Not everybody is going to be able to do the kind of in-depth reporting that I do. In the case of reporting on hate and extremism, not everybody is going to be able to deal with the personal cost of that kind of reporting. But it’s also expensive. I mean, my team and I are not cheap. We have to deal with the occasional retaliatory lawsuit. We’ve never lost a lawsuit, but still, it’s easy to file a lawsuit, it’s easy to make claims, and it’s costly to defend. So I think the biggest hurdle is that some corporations just do not want to take that risk.
Have you been hit with any of these, SLAPP suits, or what I would call frivolous lawsuits, by subjects of your reporting?
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve sort of lost count at this point. Tennessee finally, a few years ago, enacted an anti-SLAPP statute, after I had gone through probably five lawsuits that we had to defend.
The latest tactic—a couple lawsuits that we’re dealing with now from some of these characters, they have been filed in federal court, alleging all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense about me being a member of organized crime or being part of an organized crime conspiracy. But by virtue of the fact that they’re filed in federal court, the state anti-SLAPP statute doesn’t apply. So we have lawyers who have filed motions to try to get these lawsuits dismissed and if they want to file them, to get them back into state court where we could take advantage of the anti-SLAPP law. But still, it’s just a hassle.
Besides legal threats, you’ve also faced other types. Whether it’s online harassment by far right MAGA influencers like Jack Posobiec, who also has a local connection. He was a former intern at the Dom Giordano show, which is our right wing talk radio show. This is someone who, as you’ve pointed out in your own writing who the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted, has collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists, and anti-Semites for years. You’ve also had threats to your life. Would you mind talking about that a little bit, and what kind of impact that has had on you, both mentally and emotionally, and with your work?
Yeah, it’s been a fairly steady stream of attacks over the last two and a half years. Beginning with the Gabrielle Hanson story in Franklin, Tennessee, you had the neo-Nazis posting about me on telegram saying, “The day of the rope is real”—a reference to The Turner Diaries, a racist novel where journalists ended up being, you know, facing hangings. During that time, there was an anonymous telegram account that started issuing a series of demands about what I should report, warning that there would be consequences if I did not follow their orders. We now know that account was being run by an active duty soldier out of North Carolina. In response to some of the reporting on the Q-Anon crowd, major Q-Anon and far right figures went on podcasts, accusing me of being a pedophile protector, accusing me of being a pedophile, accusing me of being part of an organized crime network. Info Wars did a segment on me. I was even accused of being involved in a couple of murders.
Then, from there, I’ve more recently faced some threats from neo-Nazis. I reported, in November of last year, about a group of neo-Nazis who are going into video chat rooms that are frequented by children and trying to recruit the white kids and then berating black kids. As a result of that reporting, they were at least briefly deplatformed, and they did not take that well. So on the morning of November the 20th, I woke up and there was an account that had been created on X called “Phil’s Dead Wife,” where they had gone into my late wife’s dormant Facebook page and grabbed family photos and posted those and, using her voice, made all sorts of horrendous comments against me. Then later that same day, there was another account that popped up that said, “We’re coming for Phil and his entire family. We’re going to kill Phil. We know where his family lives.” And you know, it can get to you.
There are times that you just have to say, okay, I’m going to take a break from this kind of reporting for, you know, a week or two or three. Whatever’s needed. So you just have to be very conscious of self care in that situation, and be looking out number one: for your family and then number two: for your own mental health. And taking breaks when necessary. Now, it’s not easy. but it’s important work. And I think the worst thing that I could do for my own self-esteem, the worst thing I could do for my career, the worst thing I could do for the country and the community is to back away. So, I may back away briefly just to regroup, but I’m gonna come right back to the fight. And I just don’t know any other way.
Phil, you recently started a newsletter, Hate Comes to Main Street. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you hope to accomplish with that?
Yeah. It gives me a means of talking about these issues beyond just what’s happening in my local community. In working for a local broadcaster, I can only really do the stories that are relevant to my community. So this gives me the opportunity to step back a little bit and look at how what I have experienced fits into what’s happening across the country. HateComestoMainStreet.com begins with my own journey, but I’m also trying to expand, and trying to continue to shine a light on these forces. What I realized early on is that I had always seen white supremacy and neo-Nazism as one thing, Q-Anon as another element of extremism, and white Christian nationalism as another form of extremism. And certainly I view them perhaps as part of a Venn Diagram. But the more research I did—and I’m trying to write a book and trying to get a book deal out of this. The deeper that I dug, the more I realized that these various forms of extremism had essentially fed off of each other so much to the point that at times they were almost indistinguishable. I’ll give you a good example.
READ: Hate Comes to Main Street
There was a podcaster to whom Gabrielle Hanson, the candidate for mayor in Franklin, Tennessee, would turn to occasionally. As part of this book project, I started digging into that podcaster’s show. And he had a lot of Q-Anon type material, he had a lot of Christian nationalism material, and I was even watching one of his episodes where he was quoting the Goyim Defense League, this vile neo Nazi group. I was like, holy cow, these things are just feeding off of each other and taking on the life of their own. So that’s sort of what’s driving me, that there’s something that’s been happening beneath the surface. And I know your team has been looking at these issues. So it just felt like to me, okay, this deserves more attention than it’s getting. That’s why I started HateComestoMainStreet.com, to look at those issues.
Phil, to cap off this Local News Day interview, why does local news matter and why should people and communities invest in local media?
My goodness. I would hate to see what our communities look like without local news. And I’m deeply worried about the decimation of local news. Going back to this Franklin, Tennessee example, had it not been for a member of that community reaching out to me and saying, please, please, please take a look at this. No one is looking at this, that candidate with the neo-Nazi ties probably would be mayor today. Thankfully, the person was persistent, because I can be difficult to reach and it can be difficult to get me to shift from whatever story I’m focused on at the time. But thankfully the person was persistent, and I did take a deep look, but it almost didn’t happen. I think there are so many stories like that—even today—with the decimation of local news, that are going under the radar. Like you mentioned with your own example, sometimes even local news decides, okay, we don’t want to shine a light on this. So it’s just vitally important.
I subscribe to local news across the country, especially if I see they’re doing good work, and I want to just do my little part to support them. So for your audience, I think that’s the thing you can do. You can subscribe and support local news that you believe in. The other thing that you can do if you believe in local news is amplify those voices on your own social media, and come to the defense of local reporters who are facing harassment, because it can sometimes feel very lonely out there. And I think, knowing that people support you—when I go out and people stop me and say—I went to a doctor this morning and the receptionist on the way out said, thank you for what you’re doing. You know, it means so much to me that you’re standing up for my community. So, you know, those are some of the ways that people can support local journalism. I think it’s critical.
Phil, in an essay that you wrote about why you report on hate and extremism, you wrote, “Journalists like myself have a choice, surrender to the fascist mob that wants to intimidate the truth tellers or rededicate ourselves to doing what’s right no matter the cost.” I just want to thank you for dedicating yourself to the truth and democracy in your reporting. And thank you for being a North Star for local journalists like myself.
Well, thank you so much and thank you for what you and your team do. It takes all of us.
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