Gawker.com shut down on Monday following a tireless battle with famed Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Paypal co-founder, Peter Thiel.
Thiel was outed as being gay by the site almost ten years ago.
Since then, he has donated small portions of his vast technology fortune to lawsuits aimed at shutting down Gawker.
These suits include the famous cases of wrestler Hulk Hogan and his sex tape with Heather Clem, as well as that of reporter Ashley Terrill, who claims she was defamed by Gawker after she tipped the site about the conflict between Tinder co-founders Whitney Wolfe and Justin Mateen.
Both sued Gawker for defamation.
And defame they did.
That’s not okay.
However, it’s also not okay for a billionaire tech star using his riches to shut down the operation of a small media company.
Roy Simon, a legal ethics professor at Hofstra University, told the New York Times that he was “troubled by Thiel” and warned of the potential risk of someone funding a lawsuit simply because they are “driven by revenge or personal dislike or wanting to prove a point.”
Thiel’s actions say a lot about the role of big money in court and its power to shut down the press suddenly and with little regard for its employees, who were rushed to new posts at other Univision branches.
All of that dirty money in journalism gives the Editorial Board pause.
Although we may not agree with the snarky methods and taboo content of Gawker’s news dissemination, they did do something right.
And here, let us just be clear, before this piece continues: the Editorial Board does not condone outing a public figure as homosexual or exposing a professional wrestler’s extramarital affair without consent.
But what Gawker did correctly is they told the honest truth.
Although the journalists at Gawker reported boldly and brashly and, yes, with little worry about remaining objective, it was truth-telling nonetheless.
In a statement by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, he recounts some of the truths the site reported that garnered more aggravation at the subject than at the outlet like, “Hillary Clinton’s secret email account, Bill Cosby’s history with women, the mayor of Toronto as a crack smoker, Tom Cruise’s role within Scientology, the N.F.L. cover-up of domestic abuse by players and, just this month, the hidden power of Facebook to determine the news you see.”
Maybe it was time for Gawker to go, but it could have been carried out in a less secretive and villainous manner.
Gawker was, in essence, a gossip site, but it had the power of a larger publication, reaching a similar audience as some of the bigger names in the business.
If it were not powerful, it would not have caused all of the stirs it has in the past 14 years.
So, Gawker, we’ll miss your coarse yet honest style of reporting, but we will not miss the slew of pieces that crossed the line.
