The article praises Gawker for often "punching up". For the youngens this "don't punch down" rule that someone recently invented is a load of hooey. People who control the mainstream media define up and down and tell you it is beyond the pale to make fun of any aspect of those defined as down.
Honestly as an older gentleman (hehe) it's shocking how badly we have clamped down on free speech. When I was young we would wonder how much wilder can the next generation of kids get? How far will the bounds of free expression be expanded.
The answer turned out to be "not at all". These things go in cycles and the current round of private sector driven censorship (yes, please explain to me how the private sector can't censor) is probably a reaction to the free wheeling days from the late 1950s to about the late 1980s.
The thing I don't understand is how that jury arrived at its stratospheric damages figure. Was it designed by the jury to be high enough to put gawker out of business?
I mean. I have no sympathy for Gawker, and don't think there are any interesting free speech principles at stake here, I just don't understand it.
That was said under oath in front of a judge and jury. Makes it rather hard to take people ranting about "chilling effect on the press" seriously, doesn't it?
It definitely could be the case that the jurors came up with the numbers they did in order to put Gawker out of business. However, a jury can't just make a random number up. The awarded amount has to be supported by evidence or an appeals court will strike it down as unconstitutional.
I've been involved in a number of trials and my experience leads me to believe that a lot of what is behind a damages award has to do with the show put on by the plaintiffs attorney. If the plaintiffs attorney can anchor high and get experts to support the damages they are asking for anything can happen. This is perhaps one of the main downsides/upsides to a trial by jury. Depending on which side you are on this is a good or very bad thing.
Florida judge and jury, Florida celebrity plaintiff, NY defendant, A.J. Daulerio acting, umm, very unsympathetically?
I think that gets you part way there...
Gawker was an entertaining read and loved by many. Doesn't this 10 year long vendetta against a popular news website make Peter Thiel look like an out-of-touch evil Bond villain. I'm not saying he is one, but to use a Trumpism, many people are saying he is.
Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan aren't the only people whose privacy has been violated by Gawker, they're just the first ones to bite back. Thiel is a hero in my book.
I'll agree, but what gives me pause to call him a hero: he supports Trump. So, like a broken clock being right twice a day, I agree Thiel was right to sue and shut down Gawker, but I don't hold him in any special esteem.
"Around half the country" is an exaggeration. Even with a two-party system, in modern history no candidate has achieved the outright support of anything approaching half of the US population.
Consider that only a portion of the population is eligible and registered to vote, and even among them voter turnout is relatively low in this country. And then there's always a segment of undecided voters who just make a choice on election day, without supporting either candidate prior to that.
In this specific case, add to the math that Trump is doing poorly in recent polls, and is disliked by an unprecedented percentage of his own party.
Math aside, given the sheer number of disturbing, extreme things Trump has advocated over the past couple years... if Thiel supports Trump enough to give an endorsement at the GOP convention, this certainly seems to condone his behavior, which in my mind is a pretty extreme position.
What kills me about Gawker is their unrelenting hypocrisy.
They refused to take down the Hulk Hogan video saying it was their right to share. Then when "the fappening" hit, they started chastising anyone who even looked at the pictures saying that we should all respect people's privacy.
We can't let distaste for Gawker in particular blind us to the underlying narrative here. I think Popehat[1] summed up the deeply concerning issues this Gawker mess has brought to the fore:
For most of us the scary part of the story is that our legal system is generally receptive to people abusing it to suppress speech. Money helps do that, but it's not necessary to do it. A hand-to-mouth lunatic with a dishonest contingency lawyer can ruin you and suppress your speech nearly as easily as a billionaire. Will you prevail against a malicious and frivolous defamation suit? Perhaps sooner if you're lucky enough to be in a state with a good anti-SLAPP statute.
Since when is a legitimately selected jury, with no external influences, finding Gawker guilty "abusive suppression of speech" or "malicious and frivolous"? Bollea likely would have won the case easily even if he hadn't received outside funding; the violation was just that egregious.
I have a hard time taking seriously the "underlying narrative" various self-interested news sources are trying to weave.
Bollea's lawyer (paid for by Thiel, and who should be disbarred for his clear violation of basic legal ethical standards) made multiple trial decisions that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense.
Besides, the specific case is a red herring -- Thiel simply got very lucky that one of the many lawsuits he was secretly funding against Gawker was so cut-and-dry. Had he not gotten that dropped in his lap, he would have continued funding other secret nuisance lawsuits until he was able to find something else with a substantial judgement (and then would have done what he did in this case -- announce that it was him in order to produce a chilling effect on other news organizations reporting negatively about his investments). You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
The reason it's awful isn't because they got punished for doing something wrong. It's that they'd done that stuff and more before and got away with it. Because only someone with Thiel-style money could make it stick.
So yeah, they were awful and yeah they deserved to be put out of business but _also_ they only went out of business because they annoyed the wrong guy.
In a better world, Thiel's intervention wouldn't have made a difference, but it did.
This is nothing new. It's probably been going on since the advent of the judicial system. Would this be A-OK if the lawyers had taken the case pro bono? Or would we be crying about how good lawyers should have to charge people equally?
Seems to me that the billion dollar media conglomerates could have funded Gawker's lawyers to protect their ability to release people's sex tapes.
How about the people they destroyed? Don't forget Gawker bullied a lot of people over those 14 years. They picked the wrong fight this time and lost. This is an eventuality for all bullies(picking the wrong fight that is.)
The main objection I've seen (not speaking for the GP comment here, just in general) is the precedent that courts are now allowed to determine newsworthiness.
That is, with enough money backing your cause, you can get information that people previously deemed newsworthy suppressed.
I have no love for Gawker, but I'm on the fence about this assertion.
A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy. Same with sexual orientation of anybody. They were gossip trash privacy invaders. Acted like bullies and got what they deserved.
But that's precisely the question. Who gets to determine what is newsworthy and what isn't?
Can the government decide that independent footage of American soldiers committing crimes abroad is "not newsworthy" and suppress it, sue the organization, demand that it be pulled from the Internet?
I don't know you and I share a private sex tape of yours with my huge audience. We all agree that I should end up in jail, but somehow is "not that bad" because it was a company the one who did it? That's not a good example for the kids. Bullies should be punished wether they are a person or a company.
Videos of soldiers committing crimes are proof of a felony. A video of Hulk Hogan having sex or Thiel being gay is private life. Soldiers are funded by our taxes. Apples and Oranges.
Consider the alternative. Can the government decide that the videotape of a prominent opposition leader (or a leader of a social movement) having sex with his mistress is "newsworthy" material and surreptitiously deliver it to reporters?
Why or why not?
We can't abolish laws solely based on objection that the government can hypothetically abuse it. The government can easily abuse the absence of law, after all.
They could have reported on the sex act in question, what got them in trouble was that they showed video footage of it. That's very different than simply reporting it as news.
How about I film you and your parent having sex, then post it on a popular site without your knowledge of the video or permission, then refuse to take it down when you ask, and then I'll ask you how you feel about gawker getting destroyed.
Honestly as an older gentleman (hehe) it's shocking how badly we have clamped down on free speech. When I was young we would wonder how much wilder can the next generation of kids get? How far will the bounds of free expression be expanded.
The answer turned out to be "not at all". These things go in cycles and the current round of private sector driven censorship (yes, please explain to me how the private sector can't censor) is probably a reaction to the free wheeling days from the late 1950s to about the late 1980s.