Did I kill Gawker? | Hacker News Reader

Did I kill Gawker?

nymag.com

19 pointsnewswriter9925 comments

Does it really matter? Gawker needed to be brought down a peg. It was the poster child for bad so-called journalistic behavior. Max Reed contributed to that bad behavior. Gawker fell because society said enough, is enough, you cannot violate someone's privacy and call it news just because you also call yourself a journalist.

Reed, Denton, and everyone at Gawker should stop blaming others, or trying to make excuses for their bad behavior, admit their culpability and promise to do better.

Society didn't really do it. When you mess with people with power often enough, eventually they will find a way to take you down.

Perhaps this is because society couldn't afford to?

Well Society here would be the Jury that slapped their hand.

You mean 12 Floridians?

In isolation, Gawker's dismantling for their wrongdoing is to be lauded.

But the problem is that there are many such organizations that do bad stuff like this, but they only get "brought down a peg" when their work pisses off a billionaire[1]. That's not how it's supposed to work.

[1] For those who don't know the background, Peter Thiel had a vendetta against them for their past stories that outed him, and later heavily bankrolled the Hogan lawsuit that eventually shut them down.

"But there are many such organizations that do bad stuff like this..." The worst possible way to construct an argument. Just that there are many other assholes who can't be brought to justice doesn't mean you leave everyone. Thiel, in my opinion, had every right to have his privacy about his orientation. If he doesn't want anyone to know about it, absolutely up to him. Gawker crossed limits on so many levels with both Thiel and Hogan. About time they got what they deserved. About pissing off a billionaire... Would you prefer Gawker pissing off a homeless person on Manhattan subway? Such an outrage it would have caused!

I wasn't defending Gawker, I was criticizing the legal system's inability to mete out justice against everyone who does this.

I don't have any sympathy for gawker, but I also don't have any sympathy for the guy who slept with bubba the love sponge's wife or the guy who is clearly a vampire and consumes blood for longevity. Everyone involved seem like terrible humans. If I have to fall on any side in this it would be the side of free speech. Hogan denied sleeping with bubba the love sponge's wife and gawker had proof that he did. The only way for gawker to prove that they were telling the truth was to publish the video. It is largely the same as the slick willy affair. If he hadn't denied it that would have been that. If Hulk Hogan had not denied it and then gawker published the video that would have been uncalled for, but hogan did deny it. What do you do if someone is calling you a liar and you are sitting on proof?

"Among the most frustrating things about the Hogan lawsuit, as it slowly marched toward trial, was that no one who hadn’t worked for Gawker seemed to have any sympathy for the company." - Not sure this should be surprising. Personally I didn't read gawker but outside of some nostalgic love, my general understanding is that most folks thought that it's impact on discourse was more often negative than positive?

Reading the article makes me very glad that Gawker got sued into bankruptcy. The author has no sense of introspection or empathy for others outside Gawker. It reminds me of school bullies who do mean stuff to people and then say stuff like "I was just kidding, can't you take a joke?"

Karma killed Gawker. Its whole business model was evil, and sooner or later some of the many, many people they were evil to, were bound to seek revenge.

It's just one of those things where everyone on every side is an asshole. The post outing Thiel (among others) was pretty disgusting, but I also don't think we're in a better place for Gawker having been taken down.

This guardian article explains the danger posed by this type of lawsuit. It does have a chilling effect on publishing and the media.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/15/peter-thi...

Other Guardian articles make the point that you shouldn't publish other people's sex tapes without their consent.

Sure, but shouldn’t and shouldn’t be able to are totally different. Saying that what gawker did was in poor taste and saying what Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel did has had a chilling effect on the media are completely compatible statements.

How does people defending themselves from outing or unauthorized publication of their sex tapes have a chilling effect on journalism?

I would have thought it has a chilling effect on outing people and unauthorized publishing of sex tapes.

Here's a pertinent current example:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/07/jim_de...

> Most of that time was spent, post–Hulk Hogan and Gawker, finding a media outlet that was willing to run it.

Not buying it. Having sex with underage kids is still a crime that can be reported on and an off hand comment by a bitter Slate journalist who's sad his power as a journalist to wreck lives has been curtailed doesn't change that.

Since you mentioned 'what Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel did' as if they're somehow not the victims, I suspect you're a journalist too. Are you?

> a bitter Slate journalist who's sad his power as a journalist to wreck lives

Jim DeRogatis doesn't work for Slate and has been exposing R Kelly's child abuse since 2001.

> Since you mentioned 'what Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel did'

Wrong person.

> I suspect you're a journalist too.

And wrong career.

Fair enough.

Honestly surprised someone outside the profession would use 'what Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel did'. I know a bunch of otherwise-pleasant journalists who are only ever pro publishing unauthorized sex tapes and outing when it comes to Hogan and Thiel.

Here is a relevant article. http://mashable.com/2017/08/22/john-oliver-hulk-hogan-lawsui...

It's a shame that this person still has a career after that one article.

This post is almost exactly a year old; should be labeled 2016.

Karma eventually does work

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