![]() ![]() The jury in this case found in favor of Hogan, that his privacy rights had been violated, and this outweighed Gawker’s right to post news on their site. (No doubt, protecting Omidyar against future Gawker slurs.This case involves a dispute between Hogan’s right to privacy and Gawker’s right to freedom of speech and expression, specifically concerning a sex tape posted to Gawker’s website. And, seeking to neutralize Thiel and Hogan’s advantage, Gawker has brought in its own billionaire, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, at least as odd and sinister a figure as Thiel, to help finance its case. On the other hand, now every publishing defendant will surely accuse every libel or privacy plaintiff of having a perfidious backer. Still, it would be a less better place if billionaires regularly take to secretly suing publishers. But it is hard not to argue that the world would be a bit better without Gawker’s calumnies and malice. He’s a talented publisher, at least when he is not shrugging off responsibility for what he publishes. I do know Denton, and, as a Gawker target, should not like him, but I do - we’re scheduled for lunch next week. But I understand how he would come to say enough is enough. Certainly, he lives in a different world than I do. I do not know Thiel and do not think if I did I would like him. Wolff: After Hogan suit, a post-Gawker Gawker (Certainly against Fox News he’d be a hero.) In part because of these fleeting instances of good work and, not insignificantly, its left-wing conceits - Thiel, on the other hand, is a Trump supporter - it has managed to rally the journalism class to its cause, in a way that might not happen if, say, Thiel had secretly supported a suit against the National Enquirer or Fox News. ![]() In this, it cites its public interest journalism, however much that is outweighed by its casual daily cruelties (I’d put it at 1 to 100). Gawker’s main defense during the Hogan trial, and now with Thiel unmasked, has been as a hothouse flower of press freedom. Or that without Thiel, the advantage would tip back to Gawker, protected by its own power, wealth and the bias of the legal system toward publishers, even perverse ones. Except, of course, there might not be a Hogan case if Thiel was not supporting it. He may seem duplicitous as he secretly pursues his own agenda, but his actions can’t really be said to alter the legal issues of the Hogan case. What’s more, there is Thiel’s outsize cleverness. Jury awards Hulk Hogan $115M in Gawker sex tape suit Gawker, a rabid and sadistic and unaccountable monster to so many people it has abused, is, by the nature of the fact that it only makes a profit of $7 million a year - and is likely to have to sell itself if forced to pay the Hogan judgment - pitiable against someone who, worth $2 billion, could in interest and dividends alone generate $100 million or more a year. If Gawker doesn’t like you, then its young writers are given permission to try to kill you.Įach, Thiel and Gawker, is unmindful of any limits.īut in the current chapter, it suddenly seems to be an unequal battle. Similarly, Gawker doesn’t just look to expose malfeasance in the public interest but to humiliate, degrade and ruin its targets, newsworthy or not, and regardless of whether its subjects’ behavior causes harm. Hulk Hogan's financial backer known for billions, maverick views ![]() Thiel isn’t so much seeking to recover specific or punitive damages, even, in this case, on Hogan’s behalf - Thiel says he’s getting nothing himself - but rather to employ the costs and the burdens of limitless litigation as a way to put Gawker out of business, or to force its sale. The antagonists are matched in another way: Each is out to inflict the maximum pain on the other. Both sides are beyond the bounds of predictable behavior. Gawker’s mass audience and unrestrained passion for personal assassination and Thiel’s hyper wealth are both new cultural phenomena. Equally, Gawker has found its own way around many of the constraints and conventions of publishing, helping to create and being protected by a new ethos, and tsunami, of scabrous, unverified and unfiltered Internet comment.
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