The Stunning and Expected End of Gawker
calacanis.com
calacanis.com
I have had a substantial number of news blog stories written about me, and I think among the general population of news bloggers there's a lack of professional ethics of the kind journalists supposedly used to have. Certainly not all bloggers are bad; some of them are upstanding, but really the majority are not.
When the incentive is just to get the most hits, it is very easy for a blogger to present a quote or situation out of context, or even for an editor to slant a headline in a certain way, in order to make the maximally inflammatory result. When this happens, it is parasitic behavior -- they are degrading your reputation in order to make money. But the amount of money they make off that article is small compared to how much you value your reputation, so the result is massively net-negative to the world.
This has happened to me A LOT so I have a pretty well-tuned sense for how it happens. I also have a pretty long list of journalists and outlets I won't do interviews with ever again.
The issues get pretty subtle. For example, it is common for them to take a one-or-two-sentence aside from an interview and write a ehole article about it, making it seem like you called a press conference just to say that one thing -- which is a massive distortion of your intent (and usually your personality). Because they want the most hits and people being enraged makes hits, it is usually a negative distortion. And it's intentional -- they are trained to look for these opportunities. I think it is very unethical, though of course there is nothing illegal about it -- you did say that exact thing.
I think as long as that is happening, it is hard to take these sites seriously as producing "journalism".
Trump had attacked Cruz's father and the news cycle covered this as "Trump levels charge - Cruz denies charge". Tapper's line stuck with me - "that's not journalism, that's stenography".
Journalists need to be somewhere between our ears and eyes and our conscience. It is a hard line to walk. Most fail.
https://www.google.com/webhp#q=glenn%20greenwald%20stenograp...
If he was not suing an unsavoury gossip-monger the discussion around this would be vastly different.
Irrespective of the legality this was a spiteful campaign at odds with the stated case(s) involved.
Yes he should be held to account for it.
Edit: change to clarify middle paragraph.
Is this a UK/US thing? Being outed in the UK was a political action for sometime in the 80s but has more or less had its time - it has no shock value and little political value. Or is the focus on the supposed cause of thiels actions the irrelevant part?
To me, the problem when we say Thiel should be held in account for funding the lawsuit is that we're implicitly admitting the court can be used as a weapon, and we're putting the onus on him not to use it, instead of putting it on the court not to allow itself to be used as such.
Funding a lawsuit should, at worst, cost some time and maybe some money in legal fees to the defendant, and at best it should help to achieve justice.
Anyway, what he did was legal. There's nothing to be held accountable for. Whether or not it's right or wrong in general is not really a topic I'm interested in. Since the legal process worked as it's supposed to, I believe this to be what you might call right though. Gawker has had this coming. If they hadn't made it so easy by publishing garbage, Theil would have been powerless.
Would you say the same thing about the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization of Woman, and Lambda Legal -- all of whom have litigated to achieve political ends.
And political is not quite the right term - this seems way more personal and vindictive
His goal, depending on who you talk to, was either to destroy Gawker or destroy the business model that funds Gawker, so as to prevent the general problem. I find it very weird that someone would come to a site about startups and suggest it irrelevant that a billionaire is secretly trying to destroy an entire business model (or maybe just a company).
It might also have turned out differently if not for Thiel's secrecy. Many people have pointed out Gawker's unforced errors during the trial. If they had known that it was not Bollea alone they were fighting but also a vindictive billionaire, would they have been more circumspect? I expect so. That might not have changed the verdict, but it certainly could have changed the size of the award.
And let's not forget that Thiel apparently influenced strategy. This was all uncovered, after all, because of certain unusual choices made by Bollea that reduced the potential size of his award but increased the chances of destroying Gawker.
I find this objection to be bizarre. I am aware of no ethical or legal rules that require the wronged to structure the suit filed for the well-being or convenience of the wrongdoer. If Thiel and Bollea made an agreement to arrange the claims in a particular way in exchange for funding of the suit, I fail to see any problem there.
I have spoken to a chap on here who apparently thought it was a legal obligation on the defendant to seek the highest financial settlement and that deviation from this aim was prima facie evidence for corruption. It's just a hail of non sequiturs one after the next.
This is of course when they're not claiming that we should return to the feudal age laws, apart from all the ones they don't like, which would be almost all of them.
I fancy myself quite the neo-victorian and enjoy steampunk fashion but even I wouldn't go back that far. Not sure what would happen to Gawker Media's Jezebel under the auspices of the Witchfinder General but it would probably bear some similarity to descriptions of that namesake in the Bible.
It is quite funny to watch all these journalists LARPing into the middle ages. Much like the judge of this court case, they hate not being taken seriously, but how can you take them seriously when they're quoting non-existent laws from countries that don't exist anymore. It's like the title of a book found in a library from a Harry Potter novel.
There's a heap of principals I think are good ideas but I don't pretend they should exist as codified law just because it suits me at this time. That is delusional thinking.
-10 points from Hufflepuff.
Given that it appears that Thiel directly influenced the legal strategy in ways that increase the odds of Gawker's destruction, I think it's ridiculous to say that Thiel's involvement is irrelevant to the story of Gawker's destruction. Thiel threatened it, wanted it, paid for it, and got it. That seems pretty relevant to me.
That's only true if you believe judicial outcomes don't depend on the financial resources of the parties involved.
That's the ideal, but I don't believe it.
The judicial system of course is culpable, but it's much bigger than the courts themselves: Voters, politicians, legislatures, the legal industry, etc.
But the fact that you or I think they are innocent or guilty shouldn't even be relevant. We're not the jury, we didn't hear attorneys from both sides in a legal process, etc. We need to support a fair process, the rule of law not the rule of wealthy men or the angry mob.
I may think someone is guilty of a crime, but that doesn't mean I should shoot them or otherwise abuse them.
Relaxing restrictions against them was a big mistake, IMHO.
But I despise barratry and maintenance even more, and believe that relaxing restrictions against them is a major failure of modern American jurisprudence.
It would be bizarre if it wasn't mentioned.
an outcome many predicted
If it wasn't an outcome that many stakeholders expected, it wasn't expected. Were there any people trying to cash out while the trial was happening?
I (and many others) can predict with some certainty that the stock market will have a one-day drop of more than X% eventually. That doesn't mean I know when that will be well enough to "cash out".
Sex tapes seem like a clean cut invasion of privacy, but what if the material in question wasn't a sex tape but a phone call being taped (such as the audio from the tape which revealed that Hogan had made racist comments)? Are the contents of that audio in the public interest?
I think everyone who knows what Gawker are like feel like they played with matches and got their fingers burnt. Whether an invasion of privacy is worthy of a $140m fine is questionable, but it will definitely deter other press organisations from making similar moves to what Gawker did. The implications of that for the press aren't necessarily good, but if the guidance is clear that Sex tape are a no no then I think we can find a sensible middle-ground to the whole issue of the freedom of press and the right to privacy.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/04/revenge-porn-...
I think gawker got away pretty well with just a fine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutWeek [2] http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-10/news/ls-41090_1_jann-...
http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hoga...
There are cases where people go to prison for contempt of court for less than this. Nick Denton and/or his staff could have faced up to a year in prison.
"A finding of being in contempt of court may result from a failure to obey a lawful order of a court, showing disrespect for the judge, disruption of the proceedings through poor behaviour, or publication of material or non-disclosure of material, which in doing so is deemed likely to jeopardize a fair trial."
There's like 3 counts of contempt of court that could have been brought against Gawker. Instead of drawing it out and turning Denton into a martyr the judge decided to hammer them financially.
Had the case not involved anyone with millions of dollars of assets, a tasteless joke or two would probably have only merited a few nights in the cells - if that. I don't see that you could value a week in jail at much more than $70,000; if someone offered me that much money to spend a week in jail I'd be happy to accept.
And if instead of having his sex tape published, Hogan had been killed by a gas tank fire in a car the manufacturers knew to be faulty, his family could have expected around $8 million [1].
I just can't understand how the $140 million judgement was arrived at. Unless the logic was "well, gawker won't reoffend if they don't exist, and they are kinda assholes so they've got it coming" and to be fair I can see how the judge might think that but I didn't realise it was an established legal principle.
[1] http://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/v...
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/23/judge-allowed...
The crime of criminal damage to Hogan (future income) would have dented Gawker's coffers but it is the refusal to obey a court order that did them in. The judge might have stayed her hand or advised the jury differently if they showed contrition but that clearly didn't happen. They didn't win appeal either, showing consensus of that view.
Whether judges should have powers of discretion is another topic but it is generally held to be a positive thing. You may be sure there is a full accounting of which actions defined the 140 million dollar fine in court documents. So far the broad strokes are:
"The breakdown of Hogan’s award is $55 million for economic damages, $60 million for emotional distress and $25.1 million in punitive damages."
Perhaps I am less shocked by the sentence than yourself because I used to live near characters like this one:
http://www.murderpedia.org/female.O/o/oconnor-catherine.htm
Probably not a good idea to know too many people on murderpedia.org.
Compared to that this is nothing. It's just rich people fighting. Nick Denton is still probably the owner of about 100 million dollars after his 10 million dollar fine and Gawker going bust. It's his pride and reputation damage to his business acumen that is suffering more so than his wallet. I have limited sympathy for such characters. Thiel on the other hand deserves a standing ovation for use of tactics and strategy. That was quite the judo flip!
More important in the future is whether Denton will be able to accept defeat sanguinely and move onto something else. Pitching a cadre of journalists against Silicon Valley will not end well for the press. The politician repercussions would not ultimately go in their favor and I don't believe they understand that yet. They invariably confuse the rules of their social reality with ours, but we have nothing in common.
Let's also take a look at an article posted by Gawker themselves regarding the trial. The title speaks for itself: "A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won't." http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hoga...
Gawker made no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact they were scoundrels, so much so that the jury intentionally awarded more damages than the plaintiff asked for and the judge didn't stop them. That takes some doing.
So, "Out of control"? No, not really. I'd say that Gawker worked hard to earn it.
Attorney: "Can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?"
A.J. Daulerio of Gawker: "If they were a child."
Attorney: "Under what age?"
Daulerio: "Four."
Clear as day. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't watched the video. And the look on this Daulerio character's face suggests he's saying it out of contempt for the whole process, but considering the venue one ought to take him at his word.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-why-i...
Or a shorter summary:
Jezebel's tagline might as well be "Narcissism and benevolent sexism dressed up as gender issues."