where will you be when gawker media finally goes to court for the hulk hogan debacle?

But Gawker Media, with its flagship site Gawker, the news, gossip and bile blog, has made quite a success out of gratuitous and ad hominem attacks.

Gawker, on the other hand, keeping pace with the ever-greater scabrousness of the Internet, has established new levels of unrestrained and seemingly unsupervised calumny, cruelty and vileness.

That position has overshadowed a very reasonable contrary argument: absent the meaningful threat of litigation and oversight of vigilant legal departments, the Internet, with Gawker as a good example, has become the ultimate no-recourse medium for defamation, incitement, blackmail, criminal solicitation and threats — all forms of speech generally not protected by the First Amendment.

Gawker is arguably the richest and most established company in this new genre of casual defamation and hate speech (and, arguably, blackmail and threat — if you cross them they'll vilify you), and, so, a logical target to sue.

Its vileness and calumnies, I am sure it would say, are democratic — everybody's a fair target.

But while its cruelties might be broadly spread, they can also be understood as bigotry directed at anybody who Gawker writers believe is insufficiently like them.

What is unique, arguably, is a publishing organization this successful that is yet so incautious and flamboyant in its attacks. Gawker, as a product of new technology, finds itself with almost no restraints and its targets find themselves with almost no protections and recourse. (And any effort at recourse, is met by further punishments.)

applejack wrote:http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/wolff/2015/06/18/the-gawker-hulk-hogan-battle/28883447/
holy fuck absolutely no mercy from usa today

some choice quotes from this absolute annihilation

But Gawker Media, with its flagship site Gawker, the news, gossip and bile blog, has made quite a success out of gratuitous and ad hominem attacks.

Gawker, on the other hand, keeping pace with the ever-greater scabrousness of the Internet, has established new levels of unrestrained and seemingly unsupervised calumny, cruelty and vileness.

That position has overshadowed a very reasonable contrary argument: absent the meaningful threat of litigation and oversight of vigilant legal departments, the Internet, with Gawker as a good example, has become the ultimate no-recourse medium for defamation, incitement, blackmail, criminal solicitation and threats — all forms of speech generally not protected by the First Amendment.

Gawker is arguably the richest and most established company in this new genre of casual defamation and hate speech (and, arguably, blackmail and threat — if you cross them they'll vilify you), and, so, a logical target to sue.

Its vileness and calumnies, I am sure it would say, are democratic — everybody's a fair target.

But while its cruelties might be broadly spread, they can also be understood as bigotry directed at anybody who Gawker writers believe is insufficiently like them.

What is unique, arguably, is a publishing organization this successful that is yet so incautious and flamboyant in its attacks. Gawker, as a product of new technology, finds itself with almost no restraints and its targets find themselves with almost no protections and recourse. (And any effort at recourse, is met by further punishments.)

bagel wrote:gawker is run by aliens who hate mankind and support communist lizardwoman celebs

fizzle wrote:the only thing in there that even implies a thesaurus is "calumny"

The judge also ruled that the sex tape would only be shown to jurors at trial, and slanted away from members of the press and public

zacmac wrote:i don't think even the jury wanna see his wrinkled old dick

248
Nick Denton: 'We at Gawker were wrong to publish.' Gawker staff: 'Nick Denton was wrong to pull the piece' (self.KotakuInAction)
submitted 6 hours ago * by Dwavenhobble
Nick Denton's Statement
https://archive.is/U687R
TLDR: In this case we were wrong but with Hulk Hogan, Bill O'Reilly and Hillary Clinton we did nothing wrong.
Gawkers Staff:
https://archive.is/M4eyO
TLDR: Gawker management broke through our firewall and removed the article without permission or clearance to do so
So it looks like Gawker are set to rip themselves apart even if the public don't do it for them.
Edit: Stephen Totilo joins the fray
https://archive.is/2h1eC
This isn’t about the content of a post, which plenty of writers on my team had strong concerns about today. It’s about our company’s approach to editorial freedom and transparency.
Seems to be in defence of the post being up as a fight for freedom of the press.

Tommy Craggs, the executive editor of Gawker Media, and Max Read, the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, are resigning from the company. In letters sent today, Craggs and Read informed staff members that the managing partnership’s vote to remove a controversial post about the CFO of Condé Nast—a unprecedented act endorsed by zero editorial employees—represented an indefensible breach of the notoriously strong firewall between Gawker’s business interests and the independence of its editorial staff. Under those conditions, Craggs and Read wrote, they could not possibly guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.