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Free Speech vs Billionaires: Netflix Streams A New Documentary About The Gawker Verdict (businessinsider.com)
Speaking of Netflix, last month they began streaming "Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press" -- a new documentary by Brian Knappenberger about the Gawker verdict. An anonymous reader shares this description from Business Insider:
Knappenberger -- who previously made the movies "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz," on internet activist Aaron Swartz, and "We Are Legion," about the hacker group Anonymous -- got in touch with Nick Denton and Gawker editor-in-chief (who also posted the Hogan sex tape video) A.J. Daulerio to be in the film as well as Hogan's lawyer David R. Houston... Knappenberger said he also tried to get Peter Thiel to be in the movie, but Thiel declined Knappenberger's numerous requests. And the movie shows how other people with money and influence can and do silence the media.
Knappenberger also showcases what happened to the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the end of 2015. The paper's staff was suddenly told that the paper had been sold, though they were never told who the new publisher was. A group of reporters found that the son-in-law of Las Vegas casino titan Sheldon Adelson was a major player in the purchase of the paper. According to the movie, Adelson had a vendetta with the paper's columnist John L. Smith, who wrote unflattering things about him in a 2005 book. Smith was even ordered after the paper was bought that he was never to write about Adelson in any of his pieces. For Knappenberger, there's no other way to look at it: The suppression of the media by billionaires is happening.
Knappenberger said if any legal documents arrive from the billionaires discussed in his movie, "We're ready for it." But he added that the bigger issue is getting people to understand that the loss of the free press is "the most important thing facing our country." Or, as a former Gawker editor says in the film, "If you're not pissing off a billionaire, what's the point?"
Knappenberger also showcases what happened to the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the end of 2015. The paper's staff was suddenly told that the paper had been sold, though they were never told who the new publisher was. A group of reporters found that the son-in-law of Las Vegas casino titan Sheldon Adelson was a major player in the purchase of the paper. According to the movie, Adelson had a vendetta with the paper's columnist John L. Smith, who wrote unflattering things about him in a 2005 book. Smith was even ordered after the paper was bought that he was never to write about Adelson in any of his pieces. For Knappenberger, there's no other way to look at it: The suppression of the media by billionaires is happening.
Knappenberger said if any legal documents arrive from the billionaires discussed in his movie, "We're ready for it." But he added that the bigger issue is getting people to understand that the loss of the free press is "the most important thing facing our country." Or, as a former Gawker editor says in the film, "If you're not pissing off a billionaire, what's the point?"
Wrong. The verdict was decided by a jury, not by a judge. Gawker did appeal, and the judgement was stayed. They also filed for chapter 11, which doesn't necessarily mean the end of the company. Gawker then lost on appeal.
I get it, you hate Peter Thiel, but that doesn't make this verdict any less relevant, nor does it make Gawker any less of a shitty sleazy website.
As a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I'm having a hard time seeing what its mission has to do with Gawker. Even free-speech fundamentalists like us acknowledge limits, and one of those limits is the right to privacy. The only exception to that is if the speech is something newsworthy about a public figure, and that sex tape was decidedly not newsworthy.
https://aclum.org/civil-liberties-minute/did-gawker-have-a-first-amendment-right-to-publish-hulk-hogans-sex-tape/
Who's "they"? Certainly not Peter Thiel, the guy who you and this documentary are blaming for the death of freedom of the press in this country. He has nothing to do with that lawsuit.
Rob