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Culture October 11, 2016
In 2012, Gawker Media published a short video clip of celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan, legal name Terry Bollea, having sex with his then best friend’s wife. Hogan sued the Manhattan media company for emotional and economic distress, claiming he did not know he was being filmed and posting the sex tape violated his privacy rights.
Gawker rebutted this position, insisting that Hogan had publicly bragged about his sexual prowess on multiple occasions, bringing his sex life into the public sphere. The digital magazine declared the tape was newsworthy and protected under its First Amendment right to free press. The one minute and forty seconds tape included nine seconds of explicit sex.
Nearly a decade earlier, PayPal founder and Silicon Valley billionaire, Peter Thiel, was outed as gay by Gawker Media. Several of Thiel’s friends had also suffered at the hands of the site’s tabloid-style reporting. According to The New York Times, the tech mogul funded a team of lawyers to find and support victims of Gawker’s attacks. Thiel explained, “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”
This led Thiel to Hulk Hogan’s well-publicized lawsuit against Gawker Media, which he covertly began to fund. Rumors about a secret backer soared when Hogan’s lawyers excluded a claim from trial that would have allowed Gawker’s insurance company to step in to finance its defense and pay damages. Typically, a plaintiff seeking monetary compensation would not hesitate to allow an insurer (with deep pockets) to enter the case.
Nick Denton, founder of Gawker and named defendant in the case, allegedly kept a list of private backers he suspected were secretly funding the case. It wasn’t hard to identify potential enemies angered by Gawker’s vitriolic reporting style. Thiel was among the top three on the list, having previously called the Gawker-owned publication Valleywag the “Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Queda.”
Without protection and financial support from its insurance company, Gawker Media would be on the hook for millions of dollars, a potentially crippling blow to the company. Yet Thiel insists his decision to bankroll the case is “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence.” He feels Gawker went after celebrities and entrepreneurs with personal attacks that other media outlets have drawn a line against. For example, several established news organizations received the sex tape and made the decision not to release the video without Hogan’s consent. They instead covered the news with an article, pulling a select few screenshots from the film as evidence.
Allegedly, even Hogan’s lawyer, Charles Harder, remained unaware of the mysterious benefactor paying his attorney fees and financing the case to the tune of $10 million until the news broke publicly in May. According to Forbes, he did not know that “The checks cleared. And there was presumably more where that came from, if he could find more cases.” Harder currently represents two other clients against Gawker Media: Ashley Terrill and Shiva Ayyadurai. It is unclear if Thiel contributed funds to either of those cases. However, the billionaire seemed determined to “severely punish or perhaps bring an end to Gawker.”
In Hogan’s case at least, the claims against Gawker held up in court and the plaintiff emerged victorious. The jury awarded Bollea (Hogan) $115 million in damages – more than the $100 million he originally asked for – in payment for economic harm and emotional distress. An additional $25 million in punitive damages was assigned. Gawker announced plans to appeal the decision, but was denied a stay by the judge, which would have allowed the media company to delay payment to Hogan until after the appeal process.
Without a financial parachute from its insurance company, Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy soon after the verdict. A source close to the company told Forbes that its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing also “allows the company to delay claims from any creditors and court judgments, giving Gawker time to restructure and hold off on paying Hogan and his lawyers.”
In a lengthy op-ed on the site, Denton insisted that Gawker Media would ultimately defeat Hogan in the appeals court, claiming that key evidence and witnesses were suppressed during the first trial. He alleged that the true nature of Hogan’s suit was not to recoup damage for emotional distress, but to deter Gawker from publishing a second video which purportedly shows the wrestler making racial slurs. In the piece, Denton assumes the position of noble journalist, ardently defending what he believes was his constitutional right to publish Hogan’s sex tape, while carefully subverting Terry Bollea’s credibility.
Other media outlets believe the bankruptcy filing was an attempt to find a new buyer before the company’s biggest creditor, now Bollea, could seize ownership. A Gawker correspondent published an article detailing the bankruptcy process, calling the court case which led to it “unique and bizarre” and explaining that Thiel was “apparently motivated by a decade-long vendetta.” The language subtly implies that Hogan and Thiel are the true bullies, using their resources to “harry Gawker” and make life difficult for the company. In the same article, the reporter compares Gawker Media to a puppy trapped in a sinking boat surrounded by sharks.
In just one month since the ruling, Gawker published over ten articles mentioning Thiel, including an open letter from Denton and an expose detailing the “frat-house environment” at one of his companies. Although Denton’s open letter implies that Thiel was petty to pursue a decade-long grudge against the media property, the magazine appears to be retaliating with its own onslaught of critical articles.
In the complicated battle between the right to privacy and the right to free press, it seems there is a clear winner of this case. After Gawker filed for bankruptcy in June of this year, Univision purchased the company’s assets for $135 million, announcing plans to shut down the flagship site and transfer its employees among Gawker’s six other sites, which include Jezebel, Gizmodo and Lifehacker.
With Gawker no longer active, we must ask: Who is the shark and who is the puppy? Can a victory against Gawker Media be celebrated as a victory against unnecessarily invasive and acerbic reporting or should its bankruptcy be mourned with the epigraph: “Here lies free speech?” Tell us what you think in the comments below.
