In an era when lawsuits are increasingly used as weapons against journalists, the risk of being sued simply for doing your job is no longer abstract — it’s personal. Across the country, local and investigative outlets are facing lawsuits and threats designed not to win in court, but to exhaust them into silence. From the Des Moines Register’s defamation case with a police officer, to the Kansas Reflector being targeted by state officials, to the mayor of Clarksdale, Mississippi, securing a restraining order over an op-ed, the message is clear: free expression is under siege.
That’s why Reporters Shield, a nonprofit mutual defense fund, has emerged as one of journalism’s most important new safeguards. Founded by investigative journalists and media lawyers, it exists to ensure that small and mid-sized newsrooms — the uninsured, underinsured, or uninsurable — have legal backup before a crisis strikes. “It’s so much better to prepare for than react against,” said Clothilde Redfern, Reporters Shield’s executive director. “But sadly, people don’t believe it’s a problem until it is, and by then it’s usually too late.”
What SLAPPs really are — and why they’re spreading
To explain the legal threat, Kevin Goldberg, a veteran First Amendment attorney and vice president at the Freedom Forum, broke down what’s known as a SLAPP — short for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. “It refers to a lawsuit that is primarily brought to silence, punish, or harass — but certainly not to win,” Goldberg said. “Most of these lawsuits are frivolous. They cost the defendant time, money, and heartburn, and the point is to get people to just back down.”
Goldberg cited classic examples of wealthy figures using the courts as cudgels. “Donald Trump once said about a defamation suit he filed against a biographer, ‘I spent a few bucks. They spent a whole lot more. I did it to make their life miserable.’ That’s what we’re talking about,” he said.
More than 30 states have passed some form of anti-SLAPP legislation, but the patchwork is far from complete. “There is no federal anti-SLAPP statute,” Goldberg explained. “Your protections are hit or miss. Some laws exist in name only and don’t do much to protect you.”
That legal unevenness left Adam Welsh, co-founder of the Erie Reader, exposed when his small Pennsylvania newspaper faced a lawsuit after publishing an op-ed that criticized local politicians for backing election denial efforts. “Our state senator filed suit, and that was the beginning of an almost three-year debacle,” Welsh recalled. “At the time, Pennsylvania didn’t have anti-SLAPP protections, so we had to defend ourselves the hard way.”
The case eventually fizzled without a retraction or payout, but it drained resources and nearly silenced the paper. “After dragging us through this and really trying to end the publication, that’s what the end result was,” Welsh said. “It had a real chilling effect on the newsroom.”
The emotional toll of intimidation
For Amy Westervelt, founder of Drilled Media and host of the Drilled podcast, SLAPPs aren’t just theoretical. “Even before a suit is filed, the threat of a suit can take up a lot of energy and resources,” she said. “There are organizations out there very happy to waste time emailing publications to demand corrections or threaten action. Even those threats can be paralyzing.”
Westervelt has seen firsthand how the insurance industry is retreating from risk. “We had this happen where our insurer decided they didn’t want to insure investigative journalism anymore — especially anything touching on environmental issues,” she said. “They told me, ‘We feel like these stories are the subject of SLAPP suits more and more often, and we don’t want to deal with the cost of defending them.’”
When she went looking for alternatives, she heard the same thing from other brokers. “They were like, you’re going to get the same response from most insurers out there,” she said. “That’s when we found Reporters Shield — and it was a huge relief.”
A nonprofit solution for a growing threat
Reporters Shield fills the widening gap between journalists and legal protection. As Redfern explained, “We manage a mutual defense fund on behalf of our members so that the uninsured, the uninsurable, or even the underinsured know they have a proactive strategy in place to cover unexpected legal costs.”
The organization’s approach centers on three steps: prevent, respond, and defend. “We make sure you have the legal assistance you need to prevent problems before publication, respond quickly to threats, and defend against lawsuits when necessary,” Redfern said.
A major part of that prevention work comes from Reporters Shield’s partnership with the Vance Center’s Lawyers for Reporters, a pro bono legal team in New York. “They work closely with us on U.S.-focused content,” she said. “We promise to turn around a legal risk assessment within five days, and they’re brilliant at helping out.”
Welsh, whose paper later joined Reporters Shield, said the difference is night and day. “To be able to send something over and get feedback before publishing is huge,” he said. “We were lucky to have support from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, but to have something built in like this — it would have changed everything for us.”
For Westervelt, membership meant not just protection, but confidence. “Even though we have our own lawyer, having both was enormously helpful,” she said. “They pointed out different things, and it made us feel like everything was buttoned up. We had all the receipts and had done our due diligence before publishing.”
Planning, prevention, and peace of mind
Reporters Shield isn’t traditional insurance — it’s a nonprofit membership model that pools resources to protect investigative and local journalists globally. “The average membership price is between three and five thousand dollars a year, depending on newsroom risk,” Redfern said. “We’re competitive with the insurance market, but very different from it because our goal isn’t profit — it’s protection.”
Goldberg agreed that prevention is worth the investment. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he said. “Having access to a lawyer and not having to think about it can make all the difference. Showing the other side that you have counsel and mean business might be enough to push them away.”
The model also helps newsrooms respond fast. “Most of the headache is way before you get to court,” Redfern noted. “The last thing you want to do is figure it out from scratch.”
In addition to legal review, Reporters Shield offers guidance on newsroom policies, risk awareness, and response planning. “We do deliver some training and resources, but only for members,” Redfern said. “We take the time to get to know who they are and what kind of work they’re doing so we can tailor it.”
That mindset resonated with Westervelt, who said disciplined editing and fact-checking remain the best first line of defense. “I see fact checking as the early step to legal review,” she said. “If you’re not annoyed at your fact-checker, they’re not doing their job.”
The courage to keep reporting
For many journalists, fear of lawsuits now competes with the fear of closure. Westervelt admitted she’s frustrated by how political and financial pressures have softened the industry’s resolve. “I’m writing something right now called Make Media Brave Again because for me, if I can’t say what I want to say and tell the truth, then I don’t want to do it,” she said. “I’m going to keep doing that until someone puts me out of business. I’m not going to preemptively comply with ideas that are about silencing speech.”
Redfern empathized but noted that courage alone can’t pay legal bills. “Journalism is a team sport,” she said. “Not everyone can take on that risk when they’re responsible for a whole staff and keeping the lights on. That’s why having support systems in place matters so much.
For Welsh, those systems are what finally let him breathe. “With anti-SLAPP protections now in Pennsylvania and having Reporters Shield membership, I do feel more emboldened,” he said. “But when it happens to you, it has a real chilling effect. For small newsrooms, it’s incredibly burdensome financially and mentally. These protections help us keep going.”
Fighting back through policy and solidarity
As the webinar wound down, the panel turned to how publishers can push back at a systemic level. When an attendee from Wisconsin asked how to advocate for state-level anti-SLAPP protections, Goldberg offered practical advice: “Make it personal and make it local. Most SLAPP suits aren’t even against the media — they’re against regular people speaking out online. Find examples of local residents being sued by big corporations for telling the truth about their experiences. That’s what resonates with legislators.”
He added that anti-SLAPP laws don’t eliminate legitimate defamation claims. “They just make sure the lawsuit isn’t frivolous and has some merit,” he said. “It protects the underdogs.”
The stakes, Westervelt warned, are higher than many realize. “There’s a growing sense that these lawsuits are emboldened by cases where media outlets settle when they probably would have won,” she said. “And with Justice Clarence Thomas openly saying he’d like to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, that’s quite dangerous for the press in the U.S. right now.”
Preparedness as protection
As the conversation closed, Redfern left the audience with a call to prepare, not panic. “Become a member of Reporters Shield,” she said. “You’ll have access to expert legal advice to help you prevent, respond, and defend against legal threats — and you’ll be joining a global community of journalists standing together. There’s lots of evidence that these attacks are growing. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it’s not a question of if, but when.”
For Welsh, that preparation has already changed his newsroom’s trajectory. “We have 10 papers done at noon now,” he said with a laugh. “That’s how much time and stress we’re saving.”
And for Westervelt, the takeaway was clear: “The job is telling the truth. The more we can do that fearlessly — and with the right support — the better our chances of keeping journalism alive.”
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