![]() The battle focuses on a nearly two-minute excerpt of a sex tape made in 2007 that Gawker published in 2012. Almost every detail of the legal battle between the American wrestler Hulk Hogan and the website Gawker is salacious. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.Bob: This is a special podcast edition of On the Media. And I think people with money, as these new billionaires in Silicon Valley do, can try to squelch the consequences of what they see.įOLKENFLIK: You bet. But the consequences are real for publishing material that people find offensive. Let's be clear, the government didn't intervene to prevent this. I mean, is this actually going to have massive implications on that scale?įOLKENFLIK: It's got to send a chill up the spine of digital media entrepreneurs, particularly those who traffic in things that very powerful people with these new fortunes in Silicon Valley will find offensive. SHAPIRO: I've heard people describe this as billionaires squelching the First Amendment. And you see these two clashes of people who have made a lot of money in the digital space but have very different definitions of what that can mean. Denton, who's a very wealthy guy, declared assets of over 120 million personally, well, he lost in court to a guy who has much more money, Peter Thiel. That is that if stories are true and are meaningful to people and newsworthy by his definition, which includes a lot of gossip, then he should be able to post it. Nick Denton sees a somewhat anarchic age online as well. But he's very much in favor of being able to use his fortunes to pursue his interests and to disadvantage who he sees as his opponents. He's very much against government regulation. You have a guy like Peter Thiel, a libertarian. What do we take away from this stunning fall?įOLKENFLIK: Well, I see these two kinds of digital swashbucklers in conflict. SHAPIRO: You know, in a pretty bleak media landscape, Gawker was profitable. Up here in Manhattan, in federal bankruptcy court, Gawker filed for protection from its debtors - from its creditors to whom it would have to pay - obviously, Hulk Hogan chief among them. You're going to have to pay instantly today after receiving that ruling. Well, those appeals may be ongoing, but the judge said no, sorry that's not the way this works. It asked the state judge down in Florida to put the payment on hold and say you don't have to pay that out until you've exhausted your appeals. Gawker is appealing that and is continuing to appeal that judgment. How did this happen?įOLKENFLIK: Well, so Gawker lost the judgment - $140 million dollar in that invasion of privacy suit filed in Florida with a sympathetic jury. SHAPIRO: And Peter Thiel it sounds like has effectively won by getting Gawker to declare bankruptcy. And if revenge is a dish best served cold then it's a very cold day indeed for Gawker today. ![]() What we did not know until just a few weeks ago was that his suit was financed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire cofounder of PayPal, major investor in Facebook, who had been himself offended by a sister site to Gawker which had outed him in 2007. He sued in 2012, saying this is an invasion of privacy. ![]() And so they posted that along with their coverage. SHAPIRO: Nick Denton, the founder and owner of Gawker, yeah.įOLKENFLIK: Absolutely right. As Nick Denton explained it to me late last week, he said no footage, people don't believe you. Gawker obtained the footage and posted an excerpt of it. It was the subject of gossip, and then it became a subject of coverage. The first one absolutely - the man we know as Hulk Hogan - his real name is Terry Bollea, former professional wrestler was videotaped having sex with the wife of a good friend of his. And really in some ways there are two stories we're talking about. Remind us what this was all about.įOLKENFLIK: Well, it's very much about that sex tape. SHAPIRO: Let's start with this lawsuit that was brought by Hulk Hogan involving a sex tape. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has been covering the case and joins us from our New York bureau. The company is seeking protection after it was ordered to pay a $140 million judgment to the former pro wrestler known as Hulk Hogan. The parent company of the news and gossip site Gawker, filed for bankruptcy today and is putting all of its websites up for sale.
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