If you think Gawker was a fluke, think again
Bollea v. Gawker proved that millionaires can kill Free Speech

I recently wrote an article for a mexican website called codigoespagueti.com about the Bollea v. Gawker trial. It has been a year since their flag website stopped publishing. In my eyes, it was, as they put it an act of a millionaire (Peter Thiel) unhappy with a media outlet, that used a proxy case to sink Gawker Media.
Gawker was not a ‘good’ site by definition. They had a really aggressive style in approaching and getting their stories. Back when it was working under Nick Denton’s leadership they published articles that were the antithesis of being nice. They were not shy about the way they told their stories. They had “edge”.
They would use without any restrictions the language they deemed necessary to get a story out, and a lot of times they did work unprofessionally and careless about the method of approaching a story. Condé Nast’s CFO scandal with a Porn Star is the most obvious one.
A lot of shit happened, for sure. But they ended up being screwed over by a Silicon Valley tech millionaire that was unhappy about the way his political and financial agenda was affected with an article that was outing him as gay.
Of course, everything is appearance. He made a few complaints, including this direct verbal condemnation on the Gawker Media site, Valleywag:
I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters. I don’t understand the psychology of people who would kill themselves and blow up buildings, and I don’t understand people who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy… [Valleywag] scares everybody. It’s bad for the Valley, which is supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different.
But did he go after them? He didn’t directly. Probably because it was a much harder case. They were talking about a rumor that was going around on Silicon Valley. And according to Gawker, it was true. Peter Thiel got mad because: what right did Gawker thought they had over how should Thiel come out? But again, if Peter Thiel is a public figure, with a heavy hand on the public agenda, that invests on politicians and of course (probably) lobbies in Congress, why shouldn’t it be news? (Sincere question)
Peter Thiel decided it was better to break the ship into little pieces, using a celebrity scandal like the Hulk Hogan one. Thiel won and just like that, he blueprinted a method for legally destroying freedom of speech. Money gets you more rights that anything else.
This raises serious questions. What will it take in a post-truth era to bring down a media outlet that gets the powerful millionaires uncomfortable? What does it take in a Donald Trump administration to sink serious journalists?
Nobody covered stories the way they did. The way Vice made indie journalism cool in the 90’s (they were disruptive), paved the road for a site like Gawker. It was Gawker the one that made cool getting out stories that made uncomfortable the powerful millionaires.
They had the balls to talk about Bethesda, Apple, Buzzfeed, Time Inc., and so on. Punching today on politicians is an art that the New York Times has mastered. But doing that is not enough. The truth the politicians try to hide is no longer a well kept secret (please point out if I sound conspiranoic, ’cause it is not what I intend), the interests that are hidden behind lobbying senators and house representatives, as well as the brands and industries they represent is what an edgy, brave and bold news website should be working on right now.
We all know that Donald hates the media because of what their job is, but nobody talks about the 1% the way they should be approached. They are not just free gentlemen going on with their endeavors, they are actively having an impact on freedom of speech, healthcare, education, energetics, labour, etc., so they should be approached with the same escepticism that we have on people that get paid to work on the public arena. We should be able to know why representatives make a decision with radical transparency.
With the Gawker case, something was made evident. If you piss off a billionaire, you will really need good lawyers and a lot of money. A case like this is not the first and will certainly not be the last. John Oliver is being sued for pointing out lies and mocking Robert Murray’s coal companies. The trial is to take place in West Virginia, where other companies are also technically are suing him. In the Bollea v. Gawker case, the location was important, and in this case, Mashable points this out:
This is bad for Oliver. Murray will enjoy home-field advantage in West Virginia despite the best efforts of the lawyers representing Oliver and HBO to move the case to federal court.
I doubt Murray can beat Oliver and HBO, they will probably settle. But this should not be the case. Freedom of Speech should protect journalists (and comedians) from corporations, not bound them to go broke. Or to depend on other billionaires to do whatever their job needs to be in a hateful, post-truth, Trump era.
So, who will go next?
