![]() ![]() This film is a love letter to the free press. He also deep dives into a second case study of how a massively wealthy individual can wield undue influence over the flow of information: Billionaire casino impresario Sheldon Adelson’s 2015 purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a deal that was shrouded in secrecy, and the dogged work of the paper’s reporters to expose the identity of their new boss.īrian Knappenburger, director of Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press. The filmmaker speaks to Denton, Daulerio, and Hogan’s personal attorney David Houston (not to be confused with Charles Harder, the bigwig Hollywood entertainment lawyer that Thiel paid to take the case), as well as a plethora of talking-head experts. (In one archival clip, the late New York Times media critic David Carr referred to the site’s writers as “the mean girls they’ll say unspeakable things.”) Knappenberger situates the Gawker case as one skirmish in a multi-front attack on the press, and on “the very notion of truth,” as one interviewee puts it. Nobody Speak opens with scenes from a Trump rally, in which rowdy supporters jostle reporters amid cries of “Fuck the media!” The message is clear: It would be willfully blinkered to dismiss the demise of Gawker as a one-off, as just rewards for an outlet that garnered as much hate as it spewed. This, under certain circumstances, is apparently the kind of influence a billionaire can buy. Gawker sets a new precedent in how we determine what counts as newsworthy, and how courts weigh the right to privacy against the constitutionally protected right to free speech. By funding Hogan, he succeeded not only in forever silencing a once-influential media brand, but also in landing an injurious blow to the protections enshrined in the First Amendment. But regardless, it’s clear that Thiel’s deep-pocketed pursuit of his vendetta has lasting and quite troubling implications. You may or may not have any love for Gawker: The site, which originated a particular brand of contemptuous, deadpan snark that we now think of simply as Internet-y, seems to elicit only the strongest of feelings. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.” You may or may not agree with Thiel about whether Hulk Hogan’s sexual escapades, a topic he frequently boasted about in character, are a matter of public concern (though it’s easier to justify why his racist rant may be). “It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Thiel told The New York Times shortly after Forbes unmasked him. WWE, where Hogan had been a star for decades, quickly cut ties. Hogan emerged victorious, but not unscathed before the trial, the transcript of a second sex tape leaked, revealing the wrestler’s repeated use of some very ugly racial slurs. Its founder Nick Denton sold his company off to Univision, which quickly shuttered the embattled flagship site (it continues to run sister sites like Jezebel and Gizmodo). The verdict drove Gawker media into immediate bankruptcy. A jury, swayed by Team Hogan’s argument that the media ought to distinguish between Hulk Hogan the public figure and Terry Bollea the private citizen, awarded the plaintiff $140 million in damages. Daulerio, who, in a deposition, sarcastically joked that the only celebrity sex tape he wouldn’t consider newsworthy would be one featuring a preschooler-the wrestler prevailed. But with the hometown advantage and an unusually sympathetic judge-and in light of a major blunder from Gawker editor in chief A.J. By the time he filed his case in a Pinellas County, Florida, civil court, Hogan had already hit roadblocks in federal court, and victory seemed like a long shot. ![]() Thiel, a cofounder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook, and the guy who long hoped to build an offshore Valhalla for libertarians, funded the litigation as part of a concerted effort to punish Gawker, which had both publicly outed him as gay and gleefully reported on the travails of his now-defunct hedge fund, Clarium Capital. Last May Forbes broke the news that billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel had surreptitiously bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s winning lawsuit against Gawker, the site that in 2012 published a snippet of a leaked sex tape depicting the wrestler (né Terry Bollea) in flagrante delicto with Heather Clem, then the wife of his best friend, radio shock jockey Bubba the Love Sponge (who, for the record, and to make things even more complicated, seems to have endorsed the affair). ![]()
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