Spoils

I can not conceal my joy at the death of Gawker, the website that did more than any other to make the internet useless.

Hulk Hogan – who pulled off the nearly-impossible by winning a defamation case against Denton while still a public figure – is reveling in the spoils of his victory.  And while I’ve never given a rat’s damn about professional wrestling, I say “good on him”.

In the meantime, Denton’s media buddies are circling the wagons, funding (after a fashion) a fellowship to report on Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley innovator and billionaire who helped fund Hogan’s suit.

Or maybe you think that the public could benefit from better understanding of Thiel’s bold, nuanced vision of free speech.

“I want to help the CPJ defend the rights of online journalists,” Thiel has previously stated, announcing his substantial support for the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. That support overlapped with the time PayPal famously froze WikiLeak’s account at the request of lawmakers, and before he was revealed to have secretly bankrolled a series of lawsuits to bankrupt the independent publisher Gawker, an act he called “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”

Dear mainstream media; “free speech has consequences, if it’s defamation” isn’t “nuanced”.

5 thoughts on “Spoils

  1. The fact that DOJ actually chose to pursue the case is an absolute travesty of the law and is goobernment-sanctioned bullying. This is yet another proof that USA has devolved into a banana republic – we are no longer a nation of laws.

  2. I am more sanguine about that law suit than you. I’m expecting the flood gates to open with lawsuits against media.

    eg: BREAKING: ‘Clock Boy’ Sues Shapiro, Fox News, Glenn Beck

  3. Mitch, the (successful) suit was about invasion of privacy under Florida law, not defamation. There’s a difference, and that’s why Hogan won. He was dead trying to claim defamation (is it even possible to defame such a loathsome public persona?), and his attempts to do so were thrown out in Federal court early on. He won under Florida law and in line with laws attempting to outlaw revenge porn.

    Overall, the suit isn’t all that different from Pamela Anderson’s experience with her sex tape. She won against the company trying to distribute it, but lost against outlets reporting on it without showing it. Hogan didn’t object to reporting on the tape, even by Gawker — heck, he even bragged about the tape. He objected to Gawker showing the tape, however, and in won in Florida on that point.

  4. Since a court ruled that it was perfectly fine to publish a cartoon showing Jerry Falwell having intercourse with his mother in an outhouse I don’t think it is possible to defame anyone.

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