Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, addressed personal attacks from NewsChannel 5’s chief investigative reporter Phil Williams over the weekend, saying such attacks are “absolute silliness” and a common tactic used by Williams when pressed on his “journalistic failings.”
On Sunday, Pappert reported on an interview between Williams and Dan Mandis, host of Nashville’s Morning News with Dan Mandis on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, where Williams said that he once asked Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) to respond to claims made by his former close colleague Jeneisha Harris on June 18, 2020 that the state lawmaker had covered up the sexual assault of two protesters by a homeless man.
The protest at the time sought the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust at the Tennessee State Capitol.
Despite Williams telling Mandis on Friday that he had asked Jones about the allegations, Pappert pointed out in his article that a search of all NewsChannel 5 articles and video broadcasts since June 2020 shows no evidence that Williams has previously reported that he has asked Jones about the allegation, or Jones’ refusal to comment.
Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Star, shared Pappert’s article on Williams’ interview with Mandis on X, which prompted Williams to launch a false personal attack on Pappert, in which he claimed Pappert “is a former Alex Jones-Infowars employee.”
Pappert addressed Williams’ attack during Monday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, stating unequivocally that he has never been an employee of either Alex Jones or InfoWars.
Pappert stated that he was the principal of Flyover Media LLC, which he founded with two other individuals, neither of whom were Alex Jones or a relative of Alex Jones, which was formed in July 2019 and owned and operated the website The National File from its launch in August 2019 until February 2022, when it sold The National File website and was organizationally dissolved.
In the fall of 2019, Flyover Media LLC secured an advertising contract with InfoWars, which was one of several advertisers on the company’s National File website during the two and a half years it was owned by Flyover Media LLC.
During this time, Pappert was an occasional guest fill-in host on InfoWars and was also featured in several guest appearances. Pappert noted that he was also a featured guest on other news outlets as well, such as NewsMax and OAN.
“[InfoWars] bought advertising from us, and as a result of having this relationship, they began asking me to appear as either an expert to talk about our website’s articles or as a guest host to fill their air when one of their people is out of town. It’s not that much different, in my mind, from when Mark Steyn would appear as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh or when Fox News has any number of talking heads go up there for five minutes. Most of those people are not getting paid. Most of those people are not employees. Most of those people, as in my case, are trying to sell something, trying to sell a book or trying to get people to go to my website,” Pappert explained.
“This is something that I guess Phil Williams may not understand because he’s been cloistered in a newsroom his entire life,” Pappert added. “It’s just absolute silliness. Again, I think Phil Williams might understand this if he hadn’t spent his entire life working for massive, in some cases, multinational news conglomerates that seek to shape the narrative.”
In regards to Williams’ lack of “journalistic integrity” to properly investigate allegations that a Democratic lawmaker covered up two sexual assaults and instead resorted to deflection by attacking another journalist, Pappert said he is “disgusted.”
“I am disgusted by this, and the fact that he’s coming after me personally and trying to tear down The Tennessee Star because of somewhere I used to go on the air five years ago, it’s upsetting because again, to me, the real story here is that Phil Williams knew there was an accusation of two sexual assaults by a homeless person at a protest. He sat on this story, I believe, for four years and did nothing with it because he likes the politics of the guy . . . He likes that he was there protesting racism,” Pappert said.
Williams has yet to retract his false assertion about Pappert amid numerous demands.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Phil Williams” by Phil Williams NC5.
