What would it take to destroy someone’s reputation?
In a new investigation, the reporter Debra Kamin of The New York Times explored the stories of several women who claim in lawsuits that they were the targets of malicious smear campaigns driven by unflattering stories posted to anonymous websites and shared in fabricated social media posts.
The suits differ in the details, but point to the same three businesspeople as the architects of the campaigns. Those same three people were named by Blake Lively in a legal complaint and related depositions in which she said that there was a coordinated campaign to tarnish her reputation. That came after she accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the movie “It Ends With Us,” of misconduct. Lively’s lawsuit, the other women told Debra, helped them realize that their experiences may be connected.
In an interview, Debra shared the digital forensics that went into reporting about efforts intended to stay in the dark. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.
While The Times reported on the Lively case, in late 2024, you were reporting about sexual assault allegations brought against the powerful real estate brokers Oren and Tal Alexander, and their brother, Alon Alexander. (The brothers were ultimately convicted of a yearslong sex-trafficking conspiracy.) So how did this new, broader investigation into smear campaigns come together?
As women came forward with allegations against the Alexander brothers, a website appeared that purported to expose a conspiracy meant to take them down. I really tried to figure out who made it, but got nowhere. I stayed on it, because I wanted to prepare a story we were going to run ahead of their trial about the efforts to smear the women involved. That story ran in January of this year.
As an investigative reporter, you always have the stuff you’re working on and the stuff in the background. Megan Twohey, a reporter who worked on the Blake Lively article, was keeping an eye on the lawsuits related to her case. We were sitting not so far apart in the newsroom. When she saw stuff, she would flag it.
Then, in 2026, Alexa Nikolas filed a defamation lawsuit against Bryan Freedman, Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace — the same people who Blake Lively accused in depositions and legal filings of running the campaign against her on behalf of Justin Baldoni. Nikolas’s lawsuit specifically cited internet research that linked a bunch of sites, including the site about the Alexander brothers, and two women who are featured prominently in my new story. I decided that it was time to revisit the story of smear campaigns and tell the bigger, broader story of how it was an operation that could be ordered up for hire.
[For Debra’s recent article, The Times sent detailed requests for comment to Nathan and Wallace, who did not respond, and to Freedman, who wrote in an email: “Allegations are not facts and these allegations are neither truthful nor accurate.” He added, “Just like the Blake Lively matter, anyone asserting this nonsense will end up with nothing.”]
What were the next steps you took in reporting this larger story?
Reporters have different strategies. Some like to read everything they possibly can and then reach out to sources. I like to work the other way. The first thing I did was identify the people involved. Four women at the time had filed lawsuits, and several others said that they had been smeared. I got their contact information, as well as the contact information of several women who seemed to also have been targets but hadn’t yet filed lawsuits, and started making calls.
While some of these women had filed lawsuits in public courts, talking to The New York Times meant a new level of public scrutiny. How do you even open that kind of conversation? I imagine they may not be all that eager to amplify misinformation or unflattering things about them.
It’s a really tough conversation. First, I say, “I’m a reporter, are you available to talk right now? I want to have a conversation that’s not easy.” If it’s not a good time, you set a time to talk. Then you explain: “I’m working on this story. Your name has come up. Are you aware of these smear campaigns?” Every one of them was aware. Then I said, “I’m trying to piece it together. Can you tell me about your experience?” Every one of them had fears about coming forward, without a doubt. And every one of them told me they chose to come forward to make sure their story doesn’t happen to other people.
What was the process of building the relationship with the women?
This story took six months. It was a long process. There were a lot of phone calls. It was showing them that I didn’t have an angle, that I just wanted to learn. After a few months of talking on the phone, I flew to Los Angeles and met them in person.
Moving to the internet of it all: These websites are designed to be untraceable. But as you wrote, they can leave behind digital bread crumbs. I’m thinking of the backlinks that you described, invisible links that send signals between websites and boost traffic to each other. How did you start tracking those bread crumbs?
Some of the women who sued had hired firms that specialize in this — tracing the origins and creators of things like websites and social media profiles. We had three different reports that were already publicly available, or referenced on the legal docket, from these firms. Stephanie Jones had hired a company to do it, as did Blake Lively and Alexa Nikolas. Each one came to the same conclusion: that there was internet manipulation and some sort of connection. I read through those reports, and I spoke to the experts who had compiled them. That was very helpful. But we couldn’t just use that in our reporting, because these people were hired by individuals who have a lawsuit, who have a specific gain.
So I took that data, and I went to our engineering team at The New York Times, which is a specialized team of journalists that focus on using A.I. and data to help aid reporting. I said: “I need to verify this, and I want to make sure that we have our own data. Can you run a similar report?” And we did. Then we had a New York Times report that was not ordered up by any plaintiff or defendant, one simply based on investigating the numbers. I got results from our team that confirmed that there were backlinks between the sites, and similarities in terms of authorship and design. That’s when I felt, OK, we have a story here. We need to write this.
You spent a lot of time on the internet, too.
So much of this story, particularly when it comes to Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, has fed on itself on the internet, on sites like Reddit. There are a lot of channels on Reddit focused on discussing the case. One in particular is very pro Blake, and another one is very pro Justin. It is like a red state versus a blue state; a completely different way of viewing the same sets of facts. I was really careful to make sure I was reading both.
Reddit sleuths would tag court documents and highlight depositions. For a case that has thousands and thousands of pages of legal documents, it was really helpful to use the internet as a compass to point me to things that were important. Then I could verify and do all of the investigative work — the groundwork, call the people involved — after I picked up those pieces.
Can you share some of the checks and balances that you go through to make sure that what you’re reporting is up to The Times’s standards?
We understood that the scrutiny was going to be extraordinary. This story involves several very high-profile, powerful people. There is not a line that made it to print that was not scrutinized. Every allegation was parsed for accuracy. At one point we have a line in the story that The Times talked to 60 people. My editor, Nikita Stewart, said, “I want to see your list of 60 people.”
Attribution was a big part of the story. Why is it so important?
When you are trying to break through misinformation, facts and documents are the best tools. When we had them, which was often, we made sure to cite them. When we didn’t have them, when something came from interviews, we wanted to be clear with the reader. We have an obligation to faithfully report what was shared and then back it up with what we know for sure through verification. When things are entered into a legal case, they have a lot more heft because people have sworn, legally, I’m attesting to this.
Every fact in the story, every accusation, my editor would say, “How do you know this?” When I would tell her how I knew it, she would go, “OK, how do you know that?” I was pushed as a reporter in a way I don’t think I’ve ever been pushed. This investigation wasn’t the hardest I’ve done, but it was definitely the heaviest. It weighed on me.
Why do you think so?
The first woman who brought a rape allegation against the Alexander brothers, Kate Whiteman, was found dead at the end of December 2025. She had been smeared. The circumstances of her death “were found to be non-suspicious,” according to a spokesman for the New South Wales coroner’s office. She’s not here to tell her story. I wondered if she felt as devastated by the smears as the women whose stories I was able to tell fully in this article.
Saying nasty things on the internet doesn’t mean they stay on the internet. They have real-world implications.
The post How a Reporter Traced the Digital Bread Crumbs of Hollywood Smear Campaigns appeared first on New York Times.
