Gawker.com go bye-bye

I cherish a free press and I think it's a banner day. A free press doesn't mean you're free to post whatever the fuck ya want without consequences. The world is not less transparent because fucking Gawker had to auction off its shingle.

 

If Gawker had filed some FOIAs and not been so concerned with showing sex tapes, people would feel differently. I don't remember anything hard-hitting flowing out of Gawker.com.

 

Byeeeeee, Gawker. And not a damn moment too soon.

 

My first thought to this ... what F'ing dumbass would think that?

 

He cherishes a free press so much, he's a Real American.

 

Maybe one that worries about billionaires using the legal system to wage wars with journalistic organizations to settle a personal grudges? Thiel purports to be a defender of personal privacy even though he's an investor in a number of entities--Facebook, Palantir--that sure like to suck up people's personal data. Not to mention he's bankrolling a number of other lawsuits that have nothing to do with the rights he professes to stand for.

As for the tweet YF posted, I find the attack on religious liberty in this country to be equally abhorrent. And I'm not the least bit religious. It's a shame liberal groups like the ACLU have decided to abandon their previous positions.

 

I don't think a billionaire, no matter how much money he was willing to burn, could take down a journalistic organization that wasn't trafficking in sex tapes.

The analogy Gawker and co. To taking out a news gatherer/first ammendment issues doesn't hold up.

 

First they came for the smut peddlers...

It's a fair point on the sex tapes, but of course the billionaire in question doesn't really seem to have much skin in the sex tape game, more the outing moderately famous gay people niche of things. The sex tapes, in the end, are mostly beside the point to the billionaire. If the courts put Gawker out of business for outing a public figure, this would chill us, yes?

 

But the courts weren't deciding that.

Thiel's motives are beside the point of the discussion. The case is the discussion. And Gawker is indefensible on the case.

 

Theoretically, but in order to levy the judgement that bankrupted them there had to be a sex tape.

For arguments sake, say a major metro did an expose on some rich guy that he didn't like. A year later they libel someone not as rich. First guy helps bankroll a libel suit, wins, and the metro goes under.......that sucks but "we would've got away with it if the guy we libeled didn't have the money to come after us." Isn't much of a defense and that's essentially the Gawker defense.

 

I love to dump on Gawker and similar sites, so it pains me to admit that they do produce good content and important stories. They're frequently cited here breaking news, whether we like it or not. They've produced a lot of great, big stories.

That makes some of the dumb shit they post inexcusable. Their eagerness to be edgy and snarky leads them into too many mistakes, and they always go so far overboard being jackasses that when they do inevitably fuck up they can't effectively walk it back. They rarely show the intelligence, the judgment, to use a scalpel instead of a blowtorch.

That's exactly what got them in trouble. Good riddance. I hope the other Gawker sites and all their gutless copycats — with that lazy, exploitive, copy and paste brand of "journalism" — follow shortly.