Mississippi Today CEO Mary Margaret White (left) and former Governor Phil Bryant (right)
- The former governor’s appeal of his defamation case against the news outlet Mississippi Today, its CEO and other staffers will be heard by the Mississippi Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The Mississippi Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in the appeal filed by former Governor Phil Bryant in his defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today, a multi-million-dollar news outlet Bryant contends “engaged in a years-long campaign to label him a corrupt criminal.”
Bryant and his wife sued Deep South Today, the parent company of Mississippi Today, along with its CEO Mary Margaret White, former Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau and reporter Anna Wolfe alleging defamation after Mississippi Today characterized Bryant’s role in the state’s welfare scandal as “misuse and squandering” of funds in their outlet’s 2022 Impact Report.
Mississippi Today said they had revealed that Bryant “used his office to steer the spending of millions of federal welfare dollars — money intended to help the state’s poorest residents — to benefit his family and friends.”
White was also quoted at a journalism conference as saying her outlet was “the newsroom that broke the story about $77 million in welfare funds intended for the poorest people in the poorest state in the nation being embezzled by a former governor and his bureaucratic cronies.”
The former governor has not been accused of or charged with any crime related to the welfare scandal. He has been noted as the whistleblower who pointed State Auditor Shad White to the possibility of embezzlement and fraud at the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Madison County Circuit Court Judge Bradley Mills dismissed Bryant’s 2023 lawsuit in April 2025. Mills agreed with Mississippi Today that Bryant failed to prove actual malice. As a public figure in a defamation case, Bryant has a high bar in that he must show that Mississippi Today acted with malice, meaning that those engaged in the alleged actions did so recklessly or knowing the statements were false.
Bryant appealed the Circuit Court ruling at the Mississippi Supreme Court just days later.
In the brief filed with the state Supreme Court, Bryant claims that “Mississippi Today, an outlet known for supporting liberal causes and candidates, repeatedly accused a Republican governor of stealing tens of millions of dollars from the state, despite civil and criminal authorities not making similar accusations after years of investigation and having unrestricted access to criminals who were motivated to implicate him in their crimes.”
Bryant goes on to claim that Mississippi Today and its employees “made these bold accusations not because they were true, but for various other reasons – to make money, to protect Ganucheau’s mother from public scrutiny, to influence the upcoming governor’s race, and to retaliate because they disliked his politics.”
Ganucheau’s mother, Stephanie, was the former Assistant Attorney General under Jim Hood who served at the State Institutions of Higher Learning. She played a role in reviewing and recommending the approval of the University of Southern Mississippi volleyball facility that has been at the center of the questionable Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spending.
Bryant further alleges that the Mississippi Today and its staff “used various illicit methods to damage his reputation, including exaggerating evidence to make it seem more convincing or condemnatory than it is” by promoting the “most sensational and damaging interpretation of evidence as if it were the gospel truth without considering innocent alternative explanations; making sensational and implausible claims; relying on unreliable sources; following a predetermined storyline; ignoring information from firsthand and investigative sources that did not support their narrative; and refusing to retract, correct, or apologize for their false and defamatory statements.”
For their part, attorneys for Mississippi Today contend that Bryant “sought to use this case to retaliate against these award-winning journalists and to silence the very best of American shoe-leather journalism.”
“The freedom of the press is ‘sacred’ in Mississippi,” the outlet’s attorneys argue. In fact, the Mississippi Constitution ‘appears to be more protective’ of the free press ‘than the First Amendment since [the Mississippi] [C]onstitution makes it worthy of religious veneration.’”
Mississippi Today’s attorneys continue their defense of the outlet, saying the state Supreme Court should affirm the dismissal from the lower court “and dismiss Plaintiffs’ appeal of the
summary judgment orders.”
“Doing so will reinforce the ‘sacred’ protections for a free press enshrined in the Mississippi Constitution. And it will reaffirm that Mississippi does not tolerate a public official attempting to wield vexatious litigation as a weapon to chill the very type of reporting the Founders intended the press to pursue,” the outlet’s attorneys urge the Justices.
Notably, Mississippi is not among the states that have enacted “shield laws” to recognize a reporter’s privilege, nor has the Mississippi Supreme Court ever considered a reporter’s privilege case.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Bryant’s appeal on Wednesday, February 18 at 1:30 p.m. It will be aired online here.
