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Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Secretly Bankrolled Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker: Reports (gawker.com)
If you're a powerful Silicon Valley billionaire, and there's a media house which actively points out flaws in your investments, can you do something about it? If you're Peter Thiel, you certainly can. The New York Times and Forbes magazine have independently reported that Thiel has been funding a steady stream of lawsuits -- including three different ones filed by Hulk Hogan -- to destroy Gawker Media. Gawker reports: Gawker and Valleywag, Gawker Media's defunct tech gossip vertical, have often written critically of Thiel, a self-identified libertarian (and, it turns out, a California delegate for Donald Trump) and his investments, covering the failure of his hedge fund Clarium Capital, his right-wing politics, and his personal life. In just the last month, Gawker Media's tech site Gizmodo published a series of stories on Facebook's use of "news curators" to manipulate the site's "trending" module, sparking a congressional investigation into the social network's practices.Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University, said: Trying to kill a publication you don't like by funding lawsuits against them isn't very libertarian, is it?
Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University, said: Trying to kill a publication you don't like by funding lawsuits against them isn't very libertarian, is it?
Huh? It's not? Especially when they turn out to be valid lawsuits, it seems a very libertarian thing to do. If a company is wronging people in a way that lawsuits would succeed against them, but aren't normally pressed because those being wronged don't have the money for lawyers, sure, you can fund them.
Hell, I donate to a couple funds for doing just that.
I don't read AC A human right
Press freedom is an essential element of any democracy. So pretty obviously the big issue with rich bastards using their wealth to try to shut down publications that criticise them is that it clearly works against that principle. I certainly wouldn't want to live in a society where the rich felt that they could do whatever the fuck they wanted and never be called out on it by the media, because media organisations feared this kind of attack if they did so.
The comment about Thiel's actions not being very libertarian is trolling. Since when do the editors engage in rampant trolling in the summaries? This is obnoxious.
They dug up dirt on him, he dug up dirt on them. Seems fair. I can see it being a problem if he hired thugs to rough up a few journalists to silence them. On the other hand, bringing up valid lawsuits in a legitimate court of law, at least one of which 12 independent jurors confirmed to be valid, that's fair game. Free press (or freedom of speech for that matter) doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without any repercussions whatsoever. I guess some bloggers have to learn it the hard way.
So if he decides he doesn't like you, he can sue the crap out of you on multiple fronts, without his own name getting dragged into it? You're fine with trying to fight off all those lawsuits, where you'll go bankrupt even if you win?
The ability of the rich to try and sue someone into compliance, or at least silence, is nothing new, and is troubling on its own, but at least when they're suing directly they open themselves to discovery. Donald Trump once sued a journalist for claiming he was worth less than $250 million, but that led to him being forced to release tax documents to the court as part of it, so everyone could see what the truth actually was. This is different, because he's not even a first party to it, he's just recruiting and bankrolling people to sue them.
And while Gawker isn't exactly a pure and noble martyr that we should feel bad about, to put it mildly, the notion that someone rich enough can use the court system in this manner to destroy a news organization, even a terrible tabloid one, just because he doesn't like what it says, should scare us. It's a chilling effect that may have significant repercussions on reporting on the activities of the rich and powerful in general.
It sounds very libertarian to me, at least he's not whining and bankrolling politicians to pass laws against his interests.
>So if he decides he doesn't like you, he can sue the crap out of you on multiple fronts, without his own name getting dragged into it? You're fine with trying to fight off all those lawsuits, where you'll go bankrupt even if you win?
It's a fine tactic to use against someone who would out you as gay against your will. What Gawker's circle does is not journalism, it's character assassination based on political beliefs.
> So if he decides he doesn't like you, he can sue the crap out of you on multiple fronts, without his own name getting dragged into it? You're fine with trying to fight off all those lawsuits, where you'll go bankrupt even if you win?
How is that any different from the ACLU and similar orgs? Lots of people fund them and they go around looking to sue anyone who is doing things they don't agree with. Just to remember, this wasn't a frivolous lawsuit against Gawker--they won.
This lawsuit wasn't mainly trouble for Gawker because they would go bankrupt even if they won. It was trouble for Gawker because Gawker committed the unethical behavior described in the lawsuit and had to pay for it. There's a big difference between suing innocent people to make them pay for defense, and suing guilty people to make them pay for their crimes.
Well, this relies on the Press being free enough to criticize the government, and be clever enough to realize when they government is lying to them and investigate to reveal the truth. Suing the media for lying isn't nearly the same level of problem, particularly when the media is 100% in the wrong as in the Hulk Hogan case.
The Presidency played the Press like a fiddle and they fell for it hook, line and sinker. They lied, lied, and lied some more and no reporter bothered to investigate. THAT is more destructive to democracy than a lawsuit against clear Press misconduct.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's hard to justify the claim that publicly outing someone's sexuality or making a private sex tape available is an example of press freedom. There's no solid lemon test here, unfortunately, but certainly courts, when confronted with press freedom versus rights to privacy, there's a "public good" question that has to be asked. What good was served by releasing the Hulk Hogan video?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What gawker did in the Hogan case was completely wrong, and it doesn't matter who was backing action against them, even if it was Adolf Hitler. You likewise can't validate what they did just because you don't like the prosecution.
They had zero right to post what they did then to ignore a court order to take it down. This is not a good test case for freedom of the press. Gawker was in the wrong and got bitch slapped for it. It has nothing to do with liking them or not. They crossed the line. Freedom of speech is not absolute (citation: SCOTUS rulings over the years). They were wrong then when ordered to take the video down they thumbed their nose at the court.