Yeah, absolutely, I was just following up on @emo_pinata’s comment about the lone question from the long list that also gives me pause. Every other reason to think this was a terrible thing is still there.
Yeah, us SJWs are so upset about all of those things, even the one that didn’t happen.
Am I missing something? Was Gawker in the pocket of big feminism? Outing gay people and publishing sex tapes is really huge on the SJW agenda.
Why have we not updated Godwin’s Law for this nonsense yet?
“So I have one more: when every newspaper is forced out of business by one billionaire or another who took issue with stories that many consider distasteful or deplorable and should not have been published, how many newspapers will be left?”
The billionaire in question did not take issue with stories that many other considered deplorable at all.
The billionaire in question was offended by a single article about him, personally. He never, ever gave a single shit about anything else that Gawker published.
The message is clear: if you have money enough, nothing can stop you.
Gawker learned the hard way.
And all free press learned too… be prepared to face heavy charges when some rich guy gets pissed with you.
I think that’s pretty much the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face. We don’t have a whole lot of actual investigative newspapers left - they screwed up big time on that one, so no one should be left to even potentially counter government narratives in the future?
If US press freedoms were actually being put to good use, then there’d be a media storm about the 20+ million people killed by the US military since the end of WWII. That there is virtually no public discussion of this topic, or of many other of the US’s recent and ongoing mass atrocities, shows that theoretical freedom of speech isn’t worth a damn.
But this isn’t new information. Dissident outlets have always been silenced by the government or marginalized by market forces. I just don’t care if one major outlet goes under. If Gawker were a socialist or anarchist paper, I’d care. Wake me up when this happens to Jacobin or Roar? In the interim, if Gawker’s fate becomes part of a destructive trend toward public journalist persecutions, maybe the only real change will be the proverbial rending of the curtain. Americans need a fire under their asses anyway, for the benefit of the other ~9 billion people on the planet if for no other reason.
Also, the fact that Gawker lost defending the publication of a sex tape kind of speaks volumes about the integrity of the paper.
“Do you think it’s fair and just that Gawker … receive what amounted to the death penalty for one serious lapse in
editorial judgement” ?
This question can be rephrased as “Do you think my A student star athlete son’s future should be ruined because of one lapse in judgment”? The answer is yes, if the lapse in judgment is, say, raping a girl who was intoxicated and unable to give consent. Which is to say one serious lapse in judgment can have serious consequences. It doesn’t matter if you did a lot of volunteer work if you hurt someone irreparably. It is only the astounding self regard that journalists are capable of that makes it possible for some of them to think their actions should be entirely above consequences. It’s an absurd question and you should be embarrassed to have asked it.
Thank you for that. Interesting reading.
They enabled 100,000’s of thousands of people losing their lives. What’s one nose?
No other industry is specifically granted freedom in the Constitution. There’s no “freedom of the automotive industry.” But there is “freedom of the press.” So yeah, it makes sense that the law treats the press differently.
These are interesting questions, let me try this:
Does it give you pause that, even if the Hogan post was offensive and should never have been published, that a federal judge and federal appeals court both ruled prior to the jury verdict that the post was “newsworthy” and protected by the First Amendment?
Not a whole lot. I agree with Bollea that Bollea’s personal life is private, and his public activity as the character Hulk Hogan he plays is not an excuse for cameras in his bedroom. The existence of the tape may be noteworthy, but publishing it was wrong.
do you think that it was fair that the jury awarded Hogan $140 million dollars, 145 times more than the average judgement in wrongful death cases in United States?
Yes. Gawker ruined Bollea’s career and made him lose an extremely lucrative contract. If you don’t want to get sued for huge amounts of money, here’s a hint: when you pick somebody to screw over, make sure you don’t make them lose tons of cash by your actions, because they will have a very good reason to try to recover that money from you.
It would be a bad idea, for instance, to damage Bill Gates’ mansion, because the repair bill could be rather more expensive than for the average house. And Gates despite his oodles of cash would be within the legal and moral right to seek enough money from you to get his mansion fixed.
Do you think it’s fair and just that Gawker – which employees dozens of journalists and staff that had nothing to do with the Hogan story – receive what amounted to the death penalty for one serious lapse in editorial judgement?
Yes. It sucks, but if a punishment is merited, then that other people depend on you is scarcely a good defense. Would you let somebody let off after running somebody over with a DUI because they’re otherwise a really nice person who runs an orphanage? It sucks for the children, but making punishment so easily escapable would have a huge set of bad consequences.
Should the Daily Beast be legally decapitated for its disgusting article from just two weeks ago potentially outed gay Olympians that live in oppressive countries?
Each case should be evaluated on its own merits. I’ve not looked into those enough to say, but my position is not “anybody who offends me must die”, so it can go either way, depending on the facts of the case.
Do you agree that Gawker should have been barred from appealing both the verdict and the $140 million judgement before declaring bankruptcy and being forced to sell the company?
That is probably not a good thing, no.
If you think “but Gawker outed Peter Thiel in 2007 and they posted other distasteful stories over the years too”, do you also think they should be punished for those posts in the court of law, even if they are considered protected speech?
I would say no. Note I disagree with publishing the tape being protected speech.
Do you agree with the variety of other lawsuits and legal threats that Gawker has endured from Peter Thiel’s lawyer that have nothing to do with the Hulk Hogan tape?
Nope.
Do you think that because Gawker’s demise is something you agree with that the same thing won’t happen to newspapers you like in the future?
Newspapers I like shouldn’t get to survive despite committing crimes just because I like them. If they do something that justifies their destruction, they should be destroyed, even if it makes me sad.
Oh and by the way, the same law firm that Peter Thiel funded just sent threatening letters to Politico and the Daily Mail on behalf of Donald Trump’s wife Melania Trump and demanded they stop reporting on stories Trump considers false. Do you think they smell blood?
A law firm is like a computer, it’s an instrument. They work for whoever pays them.
But does that mean it’s perfectly fine for Thiel’s lawyers to bar Gawker from paying for the legal defense of Daulerio, and at the same time, freezing his personal bank account so that he has no money to hire his own lawyer?
Lawyers don’t bar people from anything. Lawyers make an argument before the court, and the court agrees or disagrees with their reasoning. If there is a problem here it would be with the judge, court, or the law itself.
If Gawker is “mean” and “snarky” and has sometimes gone over the moral line by publishing private facts about public figures, should other gossip magazines be driven out of business by other deep pocketed celebrities as well?
Yes if they do something illegal. I don’t agree with “bleeding dry through unjustified lawsuits” tactics, but funding a well founded lawsuit by a third party is perfectly legitimate.
when every newspaper is forced out of business by one billionaire or another who took issue with stories that many consider distasteful or deplorable and should not have been published, how many newspapers will be left?
It’s rather doubtful that this will have such consequences, because I don’t view the result as some new development. Newspapers should refrain from publishing videos of people having sex in what they believe is a private setting. It’s not that hard.
Do you think it’s fair and just that Gawker – which employees dozens of journalists and staff that had nothing to do with the Hogan story – receive what amounted to the death penalty for one serious lapse in editorial judgement?
The thing it wasn’t just ‘one lapse of editorial judgement’ but several issues and let’s not forget several dozen times I’d be browsing IO9 while the (curated?) left nav bar was loudly yelling ‘Faggot!’ (literally, or whatever other offensive terminology is in the non-geek article that I was being pointed towards while reading about 3-D printed dice).
I also honestly have no sympathy for the concept of just going out of your way to ruin somebody else’s day for clicks and money…and while Gawker had some nice articles, they also had a lot that were just talking smack about otherwise harmless people and had made a decision to ride the ‘let’s be shocking and sensational’ bandwagon at the expense of ethics.
That decision (and the frequent doubling-down) is what led to this end result. I’m surprised by it, but that’s only because I’m not used to things being fair or reasonable.
Do you think that because Gawker’s demise is something you agree with that the same thing won’t happen to newspapers you like in the future?
I don’t see the connection. It’s not like Gawker had a moral high ground or anything, they were the (all too frequent) villains in this tale. All you need to do to not get treated like one is not to act like one. I’m not suddenly worried that BoingBoing will go down. The apples and oranges aren’t related to each other.
“At the hands of the legal system” is a bullshit descriptor of what happened.
They were found liable in civil court and had to pay damages, which bankrupted them, allowing new ownership that chose to close them. Payback, undoubtedly, but to reduce it to “at the hands of the legal system” is bullshit, and not coincidentally, where I stopped reading.
The first amendment protects your freedom of speech from being censored. It does not make you immune to the consequences of your words. Outing someone for having a certain sexual orientation is and should be considered hate speech, and they should go to jail for it none the less be liable for damages. Furthermore as a businessman being outed as gay can cost you millions, or billions of dollars. Remember we are on the progressive half of the world, and even in this country many would not do business with him. Even more so in many other countries entire businesses would immediately cease business with a known homosexual male.
Nobody believes that Gawker was committed to “news”, and the “newsworthy”.
It’s Hogan piece was all about tabloid gossip and bullshit.
There’s enough of that already.
Hogan himself hasn’t been “news” in years. Why should who he fucks be “news”?
Really, who cares?
One of the strangest side effect to me of this case was there constant gawker yelling at Peter Thiel long before this case like he was a super villain. Once the case was revealed to be bankrolled by him, their hate understandably went thought the roof. But i got curious from this, i knew he was the inspiration for the peter Gregory character on silicon valley who i loved, but i had never thought of him more then the conservative guy who started pay pal and got in on face book when it mattered.But after that i watched lots of long format lectures interviews and then read his new book zero to one. I found that there was little of the red skull like persona gawker painted and found i agreed with him more then not and when i did i had to think hard why.
I’m a Canadian lefty yet i found my self nodding more and more on his tech concepts, philosophies etc and even though hes religious for instance, he was fair against his own beliefs something that’s hard to do on any point of the political spectrum.
[also does any one really think gawker is like the intercept in content?]
I’m still not 100 percent on the outcome of this but i found gawker and its other ilk 21st century yellow journalist sites,[i hate even using that word in reference to them] More interested in starting fights and engaging in fueling the wider social problem on all sides of if your not with us your against us.
I bounce between fearing that this was a death of free speech issue to thinking if peter thiel had put this up for crowdfunding i would have contributed so great is my venom.
So when they outed a non-celebrity/non-power broker last year, that wasn’t a serious lapse in judgement on par with outing Thiel?
Gawker made a number of lapses in judgement over the years. They were toxic to many advertisers. I’m sure that their inability to fully monetize the brand was a contributing factor in how vulnerable to Thiel’s attack.
I’m very uncomfortable that a media company can be brought down by a billionaire, yes. But Gawker did have a major role in their own demise.
Freedom of the press still has limits, and considering people’s opinion of the neighboring clause in the Bill of Rights there is a line that people disagree on.
I know, right. They haven’t posted anything for a few years now. And I fucking love Milo. Their cereal is just the best.
Yeah I don’t question that the sum was too much, that Thiel’s involvement is extremely dangerous, or that many people are affected by decisions of the courts or government… but VW was the exact thought I had in response to this question.
Maybe it’s better to question the ethics in a judge basically shuttering a company with a ruling (at least as I understand it the judge has a significant degree of control on the award). It’s certainly a factor, but it’s not like they can say “don’t do that again” or “change these decision makers within the organization” as a stipulation to the award.
