I’m really incensed by the level of discourse here.
I’ve been reading Boing Boing since 2001 (when I was a history and chemical engineering undergrad). I also used to write for Gawker, on-and-off, in 2014 and 2015. Allow me to do my best to correct the record, here, on some facets of the “Gawker v. Bollea” case and Gawker’s merits as a news media outlet.
1. The case wasn’t “a perfectly reasonable invasion-of-privacy suit.” (per @glenblank) This suit was losing, justly, on First Amendment grounds when it was then strategically refiled in Terry Bollea’s home state and hometown, where he’s viewed as a local boy made good. A federal judge and a Florida state appeals court both reviewed the facts and deemed the tape a matter of public interest. You may think that sounds crazy or odious, but a major part of the reason why is that Terry Bollea himself made his sex life a significant part of the Hulk Hogan brand in his later years, with a variety of equally crazy or odious media appearances from radio interviews, to a tell-all memoir, to a reality TV show. Comparing what Gawker did to “the Fappening” hacks that Jezebel condemned (per @Mal_Tosevite) ignores the entire context, the tone of the accompanying article, as well as inaccurately imagining that Gawker posted the whole sex tape instead of a grainy, one-minute, 41-second clip, mostly to prove it existed and that they had it.
It’s certainly not my favorite Gawker article, but unless you think you know more about the law than U.S. District Judge James Whittemore, whose ruling forced Hogan’s team to try again at the state level, it would behoove you to exercise some humility about what qualifies as constitutionally protected speech.
A granular look at how the case was pursued leaves no doubt that what happened was an extreme and carefully executed case of monied interests bending the legal system into a cudgel for their own aims.
Case in point: Rather than pursue the highest monetary amount for their “client,” Terry Bollea’s legal team dropped the claim of “negligent infliction of emotional distress,” specifically because it was the only part of the suit covered by Gawker’s insurance policy, thus allowing their provider (St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company) to leave the company high and dry, maximizing the financial damage and ensuring ruination. If the goal had been to penalize Gawker for overreach, that mission would have been accomplished very early in the court proceedings. Ultimately, the goal was to destroy Gawker for daring to be an independently owned voice that criticized Silicon Valley billionaires, like Thiel. Take an honest look at all the other stories about Peter Thiel that Gawker has published, exposing his financial support for climate denial and anti-immigrant activism, the failings of his dismal hedge fund Clarium Capital, and so on.
Ask yourself: Do any of you really think Thiel would have come out and said, “I have a vendetta against Gawker for writing ‘Facebook Billionaire’s Dangerous Party Draws Firefighters’ because it made me look like a cavalier dilettante, who got lucky with Facebook, and in whose failing hedge fund one should not entrust their private capital?” (Thiel funded multiple considerably less meritorious cases against Gawker concurrent with the Hogan episode, including one from that guy, Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely claimed he invented email. Clearly, the goal wasn’t justice; it was to outspend Gawker Media’s legal war chest until something stuck, by any means necessary.)
2. Gawker published good scoops paid for by highly trafficked clickbait. Worse outlets existed, and still do, pocketing money on the trash people want to see online. Gawker was one that simultaneously let me go after Ben Carson’s stock-options fraud at CostCo, and James O’Keefe’s unqualified nepotism hire at Project Veritas, and to openly question the Obama administration’s unsubstantiated claims about the MH17 crash over Ukraine. In my experience, the people who hate Gawker the most typically never actually read Gawker; they only judged the site from the screaming headlines friends and family posted to social media. If all I knew about Gawker was the outline of Jon Hamm’s dick protruding from a loose pair of chinos, maybe I would hate it too, but guess what? Sites like The Superficial and TMZ still freaking exist and they never let a guy like me explain Barclay’s “Dark Pool” trading scandal to that same audience. So, be serious: what about this site didn’t deserve to exist again, exactly? Why not keep pushing until Taboola, and Gossip Cop, and RADAR online, are all sued out of existence too? What have you been doing on your high horses these days?
3. This is a minor point, but Gawker’s Creative Commons license clearly states that it’s “freely revocable” — and very much less clearly states whether or not it applies to all of Gawker Media’s original content or simply the Kinja output made by users availing themselves of the company’s “Services.” There’s no “funny thing” here, I’m afraid. Thiel can do exactly what he thinks he can do and exactly what people are afraid of.
I hate being caught “mad online,” but really, you guys, please be smarter about this. It’s an actual threat to democratic values and freedom of the press.
