This is the crux of it. I’ve been a daily reader of the various Gawker websites for years (say what you will about the quality of the content, the sheer amount that they put out is unimpeachable, and definitely helps me get through the work day).
Over and over again, the editorial staff have proven themselves unwilling or incapable of doing at least half of their jobs - the actual editing. Whether it’s content going live riddled with typos and factual errors, or Jezebel repeatedly insinuating that all Asian women look alike, they just go off in all directions a lot of the time, and never seem to step back and think, "Should I say this? Should I say this like this? That’s why they got no sympathy with readers over this issue, even when two popular writers quit (and you’d think, anyway, that readers on a generally-liberal website would be with content creators against big bad advertising interests). But in fact, it just looks like someone needs to be an adult and save these bozos from themselves occasionally, so no one’s really too upset when that happens.
Pretty sure this story has lawsuit written all over it two consider who the executive is along with your other points. When you choose to ignore sources and publish libelous materials about a private citizen when you already have lawsuits active in court against you for the same thing you are committing suicide as a publication.
I mean, Hogan’s lawsuit will likely not end up costing the $100M payout but the added legal resources have to be weighing on Gawker’s books. To add fuel to that fire and open up another lawsuit along the same lines (this time with a lot less money made from the story) is just the editorial staff going full UAW stereotype and biting the hand that feeds them,
Absolutely they did. It was a pretty in-depth story, for all its horrendous other faults, and the reporter absolutely asked why “Ryan” was bringing it to Gawker:
He was trying to blackmail Geithner into helping
him with his HUD case.
Where does it say that the reporter asked why “Ryan” was bringing it to Gawker? All I see is another claim from “Ryan” that Geithner promised to take his complaint to Obama if he killed the Gawker story, and Geithner claims that it’s a shakedown because he has no idea who that person is. I don’t see anywhere that Gawker knows that “Ryan” attempted to blackmail him with the story before coming to them - unless Geithner offered some proof of that and they left it out of the story.
Still an absolutely shitty thing to do, with an unreliable (at best) source - and particularly strange since the subject of the article isn’t the typical type of subject covered by Gawker. I was just questioning how everybody seems to knwo that they Gawker was explicitly aware of this being a full on blackmail attempt before they published their (meandering, typical-to-Gawker unreadable) story. And I just don’t see that there.
Well, the known parts are this (all according to the article and Ryan, Geithner’s saying none of this is true):
Ryan told the journalist that the only reason he was telling him the story because he needed help with HUD
Ryan told Geithner about the story ahead of time. (Why?)
Ryan got a promise from Geithner that if he, Ryan, killed the Gawker story, Geithner would help him out.
We agree on those points, right?
So yes, “Ryan got a promise” doesn’t explicitly describe cause and effect. Geithner could have promised this to Ryan completely out of the blue.
“Oh my,” says Ryan, “I never expected that. Thank you!”
Sure, it’s possible. But it seems absolutely more likely than not that Ryan got that promise out of Geithner. It might not have happened like that, but it’s extremely likely, and the reporter knew that, and went ahead with it anyway.
