MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In May 2016, Gawker Media, the pioneering online media company founded in 2002 by Nick Denton, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is now up for sale, after losing an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by Terry Bollea (aka “Hulk Hogan”), in which a Florida jury awarded Bollea $140 million. Bollea had successfully argued that Gawker Media’s inclusion of excerpts of a sex tape it had received showed Bollea having sex with his then best friend’s wife, as part of a published article on their relationship, had violated his right of privacy since it was included without his consent. Gawker Media’s request for a new state trial was denied on appeal, after its arguments that the tape was newsworthy and that material evidence had been excluded was rejected.

After the Florida jury’s decision against Gawker Media, the company learned that Bollea’s case had been financed by a third party, Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and co-founder of PayPal and a Donald Trump supporter. Apparently, Thiel was very upset that Gawker Media had published articles about him concerning his sexual orientation which he thought lacked any news value. And he felt that Gawker Media was not a legitimate news outlet.

Critics have argued that Thiel’s actions against Gawker Media are deeply troubling because of their potential negative implications for press freedoms in the digital age i.e., press intimidation, self-censorship and worse, possibly forcing a news outlet that is disliked out of business. And other billionaires, namely Frank Vander Sloot, have also financed an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against the progressive media publication, Mother Jones.

Thus, I am proposing a critical legal analysis of the Gawker Media and Mother Jones cases, to address the issue of billionaires’ financing of lawsuits against news organizations, and their implications for press freedoms in the digital age.