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The Gawker Thread: Actually About Ethics In Journalism
Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud
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I'm making a separate thread for the Gawker Media trial that has been very high profile here.
My thoughts:
1) I feel bad for Hulk Hogan that he had to go through this.
2) Gawker Media was incredibly flippant on the stand and during depositions. Their much-beloved snark did not go well in Florida.
3) The jury asking if a woman slept her way to the top with Nick Denton really reflects how disconnected this jury was (intentional by Hogan and a smart move) to Gawker Media. Nick Denton is very much a gay man.
4) This case is definitely being appealed and it appears that higher courts will probably reverse the finding but maybe still require partial payment.
Why would this be? The appeal to change courts wasn't outright rejected, it was acknowledged on first amendment grounds but rejected because they were out of jurisdiction at that time. I believe the 1st Amendment protects tabloid journalism even if it is gross and scummy. Moreover, there seems to be a lot of whispering on the Gawker side that Hulk Hogan went after this so hard to prevent the revealing of other tapes where he uses racially charged language in reference to his daughter's boyfriend.
We live in a weird world where we have to decide where blog stuff falls in terms of free speech.
Thoughts?
My thoughts:
1) I feel bad for Hulk Hogan that he had to go through this.
2) Gawker Media was incredibly flippant on the stand and during depositions. Their much-beloved snark did not go well in Florida.
3) The jury asking if a woman slept her way to the top with Nick Denton really reflects how disconnected this jury was (intentional by Hogan and a smart move) to Gawker Media. Nick Denton is very much a gay man.
4) This case is definitely being appealed and it appears that higher courts will probably reverse the finding but maybe still require partial payment.
Why would this be? The appeal to change courts wasn't outright rejected, it was acknowledged on first amendment grounds but rejected because they were out of jurisdiction at that time. I believe the 1st Amendment protects tabloid journalism even if it is gross and scummy. Moreover, there seems to be a lot of whispering on the Gawker side that Hulk Hogan went after this so hard to prevent the revealing of other tapes where he uses racially charged language in reference to his daughter's boyfriend.
We live in a weird world where we have to decide where blog stuff falls in terms of free speech.
Thoughts?
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The amount of money awarded is obviously ridiculous, though.
The amount is a function of Gawker idiocy in deposition and on the stand. I hope Denton gets better lawyers, ones that know how to teach their clients how to behave.
"Public interest" isn't the standard though. Hogan is a public figure, and information that is embarrassing but true is pretty explicitly protected by NY v Sullivan. Its likely this will be reversed (and possibly the law struck entirely) at the appellate level
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As I said before, arguing that "Bubba said Hogan knew about the cameras to the FBI" isn't a terribly compelling argument, considering that telling the FBI "hey, I taped my buddy boinking my wife without his knowledge" would be confessing to a crime to a law enforcement agency.
How is he a public figure, though? Because he's a celebrity? That's a rather problematic argument to make.
A big part of the case is not about whether reporting that adultery took place, or that proof exists, but rather whether publishing what amounts to revenge porn for profit is protected.
There wouldn't be any case at all if they published that the proof exists and had been seen.
Because you're saying that fame makes you fair game for the press. That because you became a celebrity (either of your own volition or because of outside events), this means that your life is now open to everyone. That's a horrible argument to make.
But why is it horrible? Enquirer destroying John Edwards was a story about his private life.
Elaborate please.
Pretty much.
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like you have to be a law expert to really address the issues at play here, what they mean, especially in relation to the 1st ammendment
but sure let's Crystal from Daytona Beach decide that Hulk Hogan deserves 140 million in damages
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Alright, how about this - some sort of event occurs to you that makes you a local celebrity, bringing to you a modicum of fame. Should your life now be fair game?
Then whatever happened locally goes viral, and now you're famous nationally, or even globally. Are you fair game now?
That's why appeals exist?
Although I think the verdict should be upheld.
Whether it is legal or not, i don't know, but it should not be (unless there is an actual pressing need to do so, and i can't imagine what that need might be).
It is not impossible to distinguish between celebrities, and unfortunate victims of viral fame.
He should have sued them for copyright infringement. :razz:
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
There is a limit to how much you need to tell people about somebodies personal life. Telling everybody that John Edwards had an affair was fair game, because not only was he a public person, but he was running for office and the affair reflect on his character.
Showing a video of Edwards engaged in sex would be invading his privacy since all the public really needed to know was that he had an affair and that there was proof. Its horrible because it goes beyond what the public needs to know and into exposing people at their most vulnerable.
Same with Hogan.
Also if a judge tells you to take down a explicit video of somebody having sex.... you should probably do it.
Bubba the Love Sponge made the video.
This post brought to you by the "I just wanted to type Bubba the Love Sponge Again" committee.
What Gawker did was pretty scummy. If it isn't illegal already, it ought to be.
And even if you buy their bullshit argument about Hogan being fair game because he's a celebrity or whatever, he's not the only person in the video.
$115 million is a ridiculous amount of money, but it does set an example.
I think they did until a higher level judge told them "1st Amendment!" and they put it back up after winning an earlier appeal.
Gawker is a shithole full of geese of their highest form, and it sits atop a platform of many other geese with other companies that do the same thing. I don't know when we moved from actual professional journalism to clickbait (as in, I can't recall the year the switch truly happened) but most news sites now are more on par with the National Enquirer than The New York Times.
Hogan is a public figure, yes. He's also neither running for president, ceo of a large corporation with shareholder interest, or doing anything else wherein this event could harm others, only him.
I don't see a reason that this was news, or should have been published. It feels like once Gawker got their hand bit the first time they started up with the racism card to try and double down or find a loophole out and they were beaten again for that. Instead of admitting fault, they're now fighting the system, standing on a soapbox trying to be a martyr for the modern journalist when in reality they're web 2.0 paparazzo.
Again, just my opinion. I'm biased because I hate clickbait news and I'm a fan of Hogan so it's hard for me to take a more neutral stance. I'll admit law is a slippery slope, but I don't think this case is going to open the doors to some new draconian edict where people can't report the news. I'd love it though if it took money from the coffers of the "celebrity media" which has done truly terrible things over the last three decades in the name of "news"
/rant.
The problem with what Gawker did is that if this is found to be A-OK, then this effectively means that celebrities have zero expectation of privacy in anything.
Consider the following:
Someone sticks a hidden camera in a sports club locker room.
Random Joe or Jane are taped changing on camera.
Celebrity Joe or Jane are taped changing on camera.
From what I've seen of Gawker's arguments, posting the pictures of the regular people wouldn't be allowed, but the celebrity videos would be legit because they're public figures. Perhaps that's too broad, and Gawker would only be arguing that they're allowed to show the videos if the celebrity bragged about not having work done, or was caught changing into spanx, something vaguely related to their public persona. But generally though, the idea that Gawker was floating for their defense was that celebrities should have no expectation of privacy anywhere.
This is, of course, ignoring the gross illegality of placing said camera.
I am having a surprisingly difficult time actually finding that as well. It wasn't defamation as Hulkster isn't alleging it wasn't him on the video.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hulk-hogans-sex-tape-is-about-to-go-to-trial-gawker
Here is Gawker's argument in 2012 as to why they didn't think they should have to take the tape down, and refusing to take the article down - sheds some light on their initial First Amendment arguments:
http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hogan-sex-tape-po-481328088
New Yorker's reaction and discussion of First Amendment implications (they are represented by the same firm that represented Gawker so not surprisingly lean their way):
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-stakes-in-hulk-hogans-gawker-lawsuit
Absolutely not, since defamation requires disseminating something false about someone. It was invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, I believe.
As part of his settlement Bubba transferred the copyrights to Hogan.
Like it or not, you have different expectations of privacy in the US if you are a public figure or just an average citizen encoded in case law. Its literally a double standard.
Edit: The cause of action was probably for invasion of privacy, but it really depends on how Florida law codifies these types of torts.
Within limits, this is not the worst thing ever. However the idea that a celebrity talking about their sex life means they no longer have any expectation of privacy about their sex life is messed up.
Yes.
You don't really have a right to not be embarrassed by true information. The existence of a sex tape itself could be problematic to those who filmed it, but that doesn't appear to be in contention here. And your expectation of privacy is likely lower if you're just at someone else's house, especially from the actual residents of that house.
By almost all accounts, also, Hogan was actually suing because he used racial slurs on the tape rather than the sex tape itself. Stills from the tape had been published by a number of outlets before gawker and Hogan had discussed the existence of the tape specifically.
I'm almost always going to come down on the side of free expression though. Privacy is important, but I'm much less willing to allow disseminating embarrassing (true) information to the basis for punitive action, even if its just civil
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I should probably just have waited when you said you said you'd been thinking about it. Very good summary selection
edit
And to reiterate what others said, yeah it was low brow and scummy, but then I tend to feel that way about both the KKK and Donald Trump so....
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I believe this link will show you the list of case entries for the case: https://ccmspa.pinellascounty.org/PublicAccess/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=1697881
I have found the complaint in PDF form: http://pdfsr.com/pdf/110388677-bollea-hulk-hogan-v-gawker-media-llc.pdf
Looks like the original claims were:
Invasion of Privacy by Intrusion Upon Seclusion
Publication of Private Facts
Violation of Florida Common Law Right of Publicity
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
Edit: I cannot find a pdf of the actual verdict form anywhere which makes me sad.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/20/media/hulk-hogan-gawker-unsealed-documents/
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