Friday, March 29, 2024
 
With a Name Like Gawker, It Has to Be Tawdry

WASHINGTON, D.C. May 31 (DPI) – A Florida jury in March awarded $140 million to the celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan after the news site Gawker.com allegedly violated his privacy by airing a sex video. The ruling and the huge penalty shocked many observers, but the story grew only more intriguing when it was revealed last week that Hogan’s $10 million legal action was backed by Silicon Valley executive Peter Theil, who’d been outed as a homosexual by the same site several years before.

Gawker’s editor, Nick Denton, a British journalist who imported a brash, no-holds-barred tabloid style to Gawker, may be put out of business by the ruling, which naturally is under appeal.

(The appeal is reportedly being financed by an adversary of Thiel’s, only adding to the intensely personal stakes in the high-profile case. The publicity surrounding the case has reportedly helped double viewership at the tabloid site.)

Somewhat predictably, The New York Times site allowed a professional writer, Stephen Marche, to expound on the virtues of unbridled free speech in all its forms – including the pointless attacks that have made Gawker so many enemies over the years. In his column, Mr. Marche closed with an obscure reference to Mr. Thiel’s philosophical tastes, suggesting that the executive was blaming someone else for his own transgressions:

Mr. Thiel is the most famous student of René Girard, the celebrated professor of philosophy at Stanford who developed the concept of the scapegoat mechanism. We blame others for our own sins and overcome that impulse only through “mimetic desire” — through mediation with other people. Mr. Thiel has turned Gawker into a scapegoat for the shifting world of celebrity culture that we all inhabit. He has made Gawker into a scapegoat for the world he himself is helping to create.

The majority of readers weren’t quite as philosophical, suggesting instead that purveyors of First Amendment-protected activities still have to meet basic standards of responsibility. “Gawker was and is wrong, and good riddance if they go under,” wrote one. “If you can’t take it, then don’t dish it out,” wrote another.

Three of the five top-recommended reader post attached to a NYTimes.com commentary today:

Peter Thiel was outed as gay, and his personal life should be no one’s business but his own. This is not news.
Hulk Hogan’s sex tape is also private. Gawker was one of the loudest critics of the people that posted Jennifer Lawrence’s personal photos, yet Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was fair game. Where is the consistency?
If Peter Thiel was a pro bono attorney, no one would care if he defended Hulk Hogan. It’s only because he paid for the defense that this became an issue.
If the ACLU, which is funded by left-leaning one percenters, were to defend Hulk Hogan, no one would care.
There is no consistency of principle. Gawker was and is wrong, and good riddance if they go under.

If Gawker can attack, Mr. Thiel can hit back any way that is legal.
If you can’t take it, then don’t dish it out.
It cannot be that Gawker is not aware of this.

I think the current legal system in this country is perfectly adequate for dealing with media organs like Gawker. If they want to push the envelope on the right to privacy and other issues, then its victims have every right to take them to court. This is no different than Liz Taylor taking National Enquirer to court a couple of decades ago.
Hogan won fair and square in a court of law, and Gawker must pay the consequences. That Thiel may have bankrolled the legal costs plays no roll in the outcome, he simply supported Hogan’s case financially. Stephen Marche can sing the praises of Gawker as much as he wants, this has nothing to do with their losing a court battle and having to pay the consequences.
Everything here seems just fine with me, I see no problem with the outcome of this case.

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