Sure, and let me be totally clear: if Hulk Hogan, himself, had sued Gawker because they posted explicit footage of him having sex, and had gotten a reasonable settlement for them doing something seriously gross, I don’t think anybody (including me) would have any objection. News orgs of any stripe shouldn’t post explicit sex tapes for the sake of driving traffic, which they definitely did. But Peter Thiel secretly funding the case and crafting the case to become a destruction of Gawker as a whole by attacking their ‘newsworthiness’ as an organization, and forcing the court to basically define news, turned it into something far larger than Gawker putting the Hulkster’s dick on their site. It’s kind of a shame that that, of all things, is the hill they died on.
5 Likes
