HOW #GAMERGATE SHATTERED GAWKER’S MYTH OF INVINCIBILITY
A few years ago, Gawker Media went through their own mythical period. When online public shaming was still praised as “callout culture” and righteous “internet rage” by activists, Gawker was out in front, leading the charge.
Gawker mercilessly destroyed the careers of its targets, many of whom, such as Justine Sacco and Pax Dickinson, were guilty of nothing more than off-colour jokes on social media. They were the shamers-in-chief of the internet: all the more frightening because the sins they punished were so ubiquitous and mundane. Former Gawkerite Adam Weinstein portrays this period as a kind of golden age for the blogging network.
The world has changed rapidly. Public shaming is no longer cool; John Ronson resoundingly won the argument against it with his new book, despite vain attempts of activists to (you guessed it!) publicly shame him. Attempts to portray Ronson as hostile to the”historically powerless” fell flat, as commentators eagerly embraced a mainstream author willing to speak out against the new mob mentality.
Gawker Media, which relied so heavily on the practice to grant itself the veneer of righteousness, has now become one of the most derided publications on earth. Their botched attempt to out Conde Naste executive David Geithner as gay caused outrage across the media and political landscape. Meanwhile, their long history of violating celebrities’ privacy is swiftly catching up to them in the form of Hulk Hogan’s $100m lawsuit, filed against Gawker for the release of a sex tape involving the wrestler.
Throughout history, great empires, states, political movements and institutions have all fallen victim to the myth of invincibility. From the Romans at the Battle of Teutoburg to the British Empire in the Boer war, the destruction of these myths is all the more painful due to the triumphs that preceded them. Few would call Gawker invincible today. Its reputation is on the rocks, as the company plans to relaunch itself later today. The Geithner story has proved to be disastrous for the company, triggering a string of editorial resignations in addition to the storm of external condemnation.
But the story doesn’t strike me as a case of imperial myth-shattering. In the major historical examples – the Boers, the Vietcong, the Germanic tribesmen – great powers were humiliated at the very height of their glory by poorly-equipped, underdog opponents who should have been walkovers. The Geithner story, where Gawker had to fight the entire media establishment by itself, doesn’t fit this pattern at all. So what does?
Gawker vs Gamergate
When a few thousand gamers started to draw attention to poor standards in video games journalism last September, no one predicted it would grow into a year-long movement that spanned the globe. Nor did anyone predict the damage it would do to Gawker Media. Gamers had no track record as campaigners or great organisers, nor as social media activists. When #GamerGate emerged, it was a bolt from the blue, and some predicted it would be over in a week.
But gamers were determined. They had a laundry list of complaints against the gaming press, and they had Gawker in their sights from the beginning. The name of Gamergate’s hub on Reddit – “/r/KotakuInAction” – is revealing. (Kotaku, for those of you who don’t know, is Gawker’s video games vertical.) The near-ruination of game developer Brad Wardell by Kotaku’s poor reporting, a steady stream of outrage-mongering on the topics of race and gender, and perceived conflicts of interest on the part of Kotaku writers meant many gamers had gone sour on the site by the start of Gamergate. One supporter of the hashtag described Kotaku as “yellow journalism and tabloid gossip brewed into a foul, brain-killing mess.”
Twitter in 2014 was the land of #YesAllWomen and #CancelColbert, a haven of politically correct outrage. The emergence of a culturally libertarian, anti-censorship, anti-narrative hashtag like Gamergate was unexpected, to say the least. Progressive journalists in the games and tech press reacted with instant hostility and released a string of articlesbranding gamers as reactionary, sexist “hyper-consumers.” As Slate‘s David Auerbachargued at the time, games journalists had essentially declared war on their own audience.
Gamers used the attacks to their advantage, sending a deluge of complaints to companies that advertised with their antagonizers. Gawker, with its long history of unethical reporting, was particularly vulnerable to this strategy and lost its first sponsorjust days after Gamergate began its campaign. They had already locked themselves in a losing battle — but their Quinctilius Varus had yet to enter the field. That came later.
Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we’ve known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission
— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) October 16, 2014
Bring Back Bullying
— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) October 16, 2014
If there is one feature that unites the imperial downfalls of history, it is the moment of hubris. The moment at which an opponent’s strength is wildly underestimated, or one’s own is wildly overestimated.
In October 2014, Gawker writer Sam Biddle did both. He no doubt intended to do to Gamergate what he had done to Justine Sacco — publicly shame them, or “degrade them into submission,” as he put it. But his tweets — posted, disastrously, during national bullying awareness month — caused a PR calamity that would lead to one of Gawker’s most visible humiliations. The shamers were about to be shamed.
Yesterday I tweeted some things about “nerds” that were supposed to be funny, but ended up hurting many ppl. I fucked it up, and I’m sorry!
— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) October 17, 2014
Gamergate’s boycott campaign pivoted, focusing all of its firepower on Gawker Media’s advertisers and sponsors. Within a day, Biddle had taken to Twitter to issue a public apology — an act that would become a feature of Gawker in the months to come. Editorial director Joel Johnson reiterated his apology on the front page of Gawker — another sign of the future. Johnson also sent a memo to Gawker’s writers warning them to watch their words on social media. A publication whose writers were famed for their recklessness was beginning to show signs of caution.
Even Gawker couldn’t hide the extent of their defeat. Editor-in-Chief Max Read summed up his feelings in a headline: “How We Got Rolled by the Dishonest Fascists of GamerGate.” A few months later, the full extent of the damage was revealed — Gamergate had cost Gawker seven figures in lost advertising revenue. The myth of invincibility was over.
Gawker vs Gamergate had all the features of a historic humiliation. On the one hand, there was Gawker, one of the web’s Great Powers. A well-resourced, New York-based “internet bully” with a reputation for destroying people. On the other hand, there were gamers — disorganised amateurs. It’s hard to find a better underdog story.
WHO IS GAWKER MEDIA?
Public reports and investigative reporters have much to say about Nick Denton and Gawker Media. It is believed, that Gawker Media is a “hit-job” service created to character assassinate, damage and reduce the brand affect of adversaries of the Cartel. Journalists, and others, have charged Gawker Media with everything from tax evasion, to being the front for White House and Silicon Valley Billionaire “hit-jobs”, to being a targeted political agenda manipulation machine. Victims have charged that Gawker Media and Nick Denton have worked in the employ of Jay Carney, Robert Gibbs, John Doerr, Elon Musk, Steve Jurvetson and other political notables.
Gawker Media had financial connections, business connections, political connections and communications with the key suspects and took actions which helped the key suspects while attacking and damaging their adversaries. Recents leaks, investigations and lawsuits have revealed some of Gawker’s dirty secrets. Outside-of-U.S. investigations on Nick Denton’s previous activities in England, are of interest, as well. Wrestler Hulk Hogan had top celebrity endorsement value for American voters, when he was about to endorse an opposing political candidate, Gawker took him out…but, that may have been a fatal mistake for the Gawker attack dogs.
They have endured numerous abuse lawsuits from staff, victims and others. The following is some of the news coverage about Gawker Media and Nick Denton:
Dear Hulk Hogan:
We wanted to give you encouragement and applause in your trial against Gawker Media and Nick Denton.
This may be one of the biggest things you will ever do in your life.
Your case helps redeem many others, and fix a broken part of modern American society. It really is a big deal!
Many of us believe that politicians used social media metrics, and fancy calculations, to figure out that your name, attached to any political endorsements, could get tens of millions of voters to pay more attention to, or like, the candidate that you endorsed.
They felt threatened by that possibility, so they used their character assassination tool, known as Gawker Media, to take you out.
We have all seen the news, these days, about characters like Sidney Blumenthal, Richard Berman, etc, and their “take-down tools” for political paybacks.
Gawker Media showed up one day, out of the blue, in many innocent people’s lives, and took their lives away for political hit-job reasons.
Nick Denton is on camera saying his job is to destroy lives for profit. His staff refer to themselves in social media as “Character Assassins”. When they take a target out, they never give the target a chance to counter the slander and libel they are about to print because they don’t want the victim to have a chance, in advance, to counter the vicious defamation attack they are about to blast across the media-waves .
Once Gawker fires off the attack, that the Press Office of a famous institution ordered them to do, their buddies at famous search engines lock it in top position on the internet so that Gawker can both profit from the ad sales and get paid “ damages bonuses” for the intensity of the calculated attack.
The news says they stole Romney’s tax forms, Apple’s IPOD prototype, Palin’s book, Santorum’s brand, The CIA’s Bin Ladin hunter’s secrecy, and so, so much more.. Anything, against anybody, for a buck, it seems.
Now we hear that overseas police want to talk to Denton about the British “Hydrant” and “Tabloid Phone Hacking Scandals”. We see that a young gay boy tossed a brick through Denton’s window because he said Denton abused him. We see HSBC leaks and tax investigation’s that seem to indicate that Gawker evades taxes with off-shore hide-aways.
We see lawsuits, by Gawker’s own people, for sexual and economic abuse.
These Gawker people seem to be horrific examples of the worst that a society can manifest.
Many others have lost their lives because of a sudden Gawker take-down attack. So far, there has been little, or no, justice. Someone in Washington, DC, is protecting Gawker but that shield of coverage has now seemed to have worn thin.
Go get ‘em Hulk. Your super-hero days are still alive and well.
Signed- AMERICA
Gawker Media: Hypocrites vs. Douchecanoes
by Matt Forney
For TAKI MAG.com
In 2002, a failed British journalist named Nick Denton started Gawker, a bitchy gossip blog run out of his Manhattan apartment. Over 10 years later, Gawker and its sister sites have become the biggest names in clickbait “journalism,” pulling down millions of visitors a month and making its owner a millionaire several times over. The secret to Denton’s success? He took the aggressive, lynch mob mentality of British tabloids, which specialize in ruining people’s lives, and injected it into America’s comparatively placid, Oprahfied media market.
In particular, Gawker, Jezebel, Valleywag, and their sister sites specialize in witch hunts: digital vigilantism against those who fail to keep up with leftist orthodoxy. Geoffrey Miller, Pax Dickinson,Justine Tunney, Violentacrez: the list of people whom Gawker has garroted for “racism” or “misogyny” could fill a phone book. With an army of Twitter twits behind it, Gawker Media truly is the moral majority of the left, instigating mob action against those who sin against the religion of tolerance. Gawker’s provocations are even encouraging real-world violence now, as Valleywag’s overfed man-baby of an editor Sam Biddle eggs on attacks against San Francisco tech workers from the safety of the East Coast.
For the past few months, 4chan has been engaged in a trolling operation against Jezebel, posting pictures of rape and gore porn in the comments section. Despite the fact that these shocking and disgusting images are stressing out staffers to the point where they’re developing PTSD, Denton has steadfastly refused to do anything about the problem. Jezebel’s staff recently snapped and posted an open letter on the site demanding that Gawker Media do something, calling 4chan’s trolling “a very real and immediate threat to the mental health of Jezebel’s staff and readers.”
Fat chance of this happening, however. As others have pointed out, Gawker Media’s business model depends on getting clicks; indeed, their writers are paid according to how many page views their articles get. Since comments help drive traffic to websites, fighting 4chan’s rape porn trolling will reduce Gawker’s profitability. Not only that, Google itself ranks web pages according to how many comments they have, as comments are extremely difficult to fake. Fewer comments means a lower page rank, which translates into less search traffic and less money for Denton to blow on exotic vacations with his boy-toy hubby. If Gawker Media was willing to testify in federal court as to why they should be allowed to rip off their interns, you can bet your bottom peso that they aren’t going to do jack about this.
And there’s the punch line. Gawker Media, the company that gets people fired from their jobs for making “sexist” jokes, has been creating a hostile work environment for its women staffers for months. They’re the leftist equivalent of a priest who rails against homosexuality only to be caught molesting altar boys in the confessional booths. In staying silent on this for so long, Dodai Stewart, Lindy West, and Jezebel’s other star employees have shown themselves to be frauds. They don’t care about feminism, “fat shaming,” or whatever cause they’re screeching about today; all they care about is money and power. And now we have the proof.
Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki’s Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don’t get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.http://takimag.com/article/gawker_media_hypocrites_vs_douchecanoes/print#ixzz3CCvoAIP4
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IN THIS INTERVIEW, NICK DENTON WAS RECORDED ADMITTING THAT HE MAKES MONEY BY DESTROYING PEOPLE:
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Gawker Tries to Reveal Identity of CIA Agent Behind Bin Laden Kill
May 1: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Usama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House.AP
The Gawker website is under fire for trying to expose the CIA agent who may have helped lead the effort to kill Usama Bin Laden — despite efforts by the U.S. government and media to keep his identity secret for security reasons.
Using red arrows pointing to a full-length picture and close-up photos of the possible agent, Gawker reporter John Cook on July 6 wrote a piece under the headline “Is This the Guy Who Killed Bin Laden?” The story has since sparked an angry response from former intelligence agents — as well as Gawker’s own readers — who say Cook’s post was irresponsible and could have deadly consequences.
“This whole business of exposing people is a real serious matter. It’s not entertainment, some people may think it is, but it’s not … There are real people out there that are going to be killed because of this,” said Charles Faddis, a former CIA operations officer who spent 20 years working international hot spots and who headed the CIA’s Terrorist Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit before retiring in 2008.
“I don’t have a lot of patience for this,” added Faddis, speaking about attempts to out the identity of a CIA operative. “This is serious, this is really serious. It’s completely irresponsible.”
Some Gawker readers also weren’t amused. A commenter named “Myrna Minkoff” wrote in response to Cook’s story:
“If this is the guy who tracked down Bin Laden, I can think of no better way to thank him for his outstanding civil service than by outing him on a highly trafficked web site and putting his career, his life, the lives of his loved ones in danger. Hooray!”
Another commenter “joelydanger” wrote:
“Consider that the next time you decide to write another article that tries to glorify DEVGRU, the CIA, or anyone and anything else used on the mission. You’re causing harm and danger to the very people you’re claiming to be heroes.”
But Cook insisted he didn’t compromise anyone’s security by posting the photos.
“I do not believe my post put anybody in physical danger,” Cook said in an email response to several questions posed by FoxNews.com. “I do not believe that people whose photographs are distributed by the White House as part of its public relations efforts have a reasonable claim to ask that no one speculate as to who they are.”
Cook was referring to a series of official White House pictures taken from the Situation Room during the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The most famous of those photos, seen on televisions, newspapers and websites around the world, showed President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other officials watching a live feed of the raid.
Barely visible in that photo is the right jacket arm and the bottom of a necktie that appear to belong to a tall man standing behind Gates. Other pictures taken in the Situation Room during the raid, posted on the White House Flickr feed, show full-on shots of a tall man whose jacket and tie appear to match those of the man standing behind Gates in the earlier photo.
On July 5, the Associated Press published an extensive article on a CIA agent who led the hunt and eventual takedown of Bin Laden. The article referred to the agent only as “John,” explaining: “The Associated Press has agreed to the CIA’s request not to publish his full name and withhold certain biographical details so that he would not become a target for retribution.”
Later that same day, the website Cryptome, a Wikileaks competitor that publishes leaked, sometimes classified documents and information, used clues from the AP article to home in on photos from theWhite House Flickr feed and other AP photos that might show “John.” The article noted that “John” appeared just out of frame in the famous photo.
The following day, Cook picked up the Cryptome info and published the photos from the White House Flickr feed, beneath the “Is This the Guy Who Killed Bin Laden?” headline. Cook’s post also included an AP file photo of CIA Director Leon Panetta leaving a briefing on Capitol Hill, where the man who may be “John” is seen in the background.
“Of course, it could be a random staffer who happened to be in both locations with John,” Cook wrote. “Or it could be the guy who iced bin Laden.”
The New York Observer posted a story late Tuesday that claimed to have confirmed the identity of the CIA agent, starting with the AP article and the Situation Room photo, and it posted photos online of the man it said was the agent.
Cook said he and his Gawker editors discussed potential safety concerns before publishing the information and photos.
“We came to the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that the White House would distribute for publication a photograph of a man whose life would be endangered if his photograph were ever published. Likewise, we decided that it is highly unlikely that such a man would publicly accompany the director of Central Intelligence, in the presence of AP photographers, to Capitol Hill to testify.”
But those White House photos do not identify the man in question, only noting that the group of people are “members of the national security team,” numerous Gawker commenters pointed out.
“You seem to have not noticed that they took great pains to make sure his face wasn’t in the shot and he was never identified by name,” Myrna Minkoff wrote, when another commenter challenged her criticism of the Gawker post.
Other commenters chimed in.
“Sure it’ll put him, his friends, and his family in danger regardless of whether or not he’s actually the guy, but it’ll generate some pageviews and advertiser revenue, and that’s the IMPORTANT thing, right?” wrote someone using the name “dgoat.”
“You should still be ashamed of yourselves.”
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Oh my! Gawker’s Nick Denton’s ex boyfriend is not happy with his new boy toy.
Frankly there’s nothing more delicious than watching someone famous for ripping people’s alive (yes journalism sucks these days) apart become his own parody on manners and gossip. That said there was a twinkle of relish when I came across page 6‘s interesting expose on Nick Denton, the media zealot of Gawker media (which owns a smattering of salacious dribble including gawker, jezebel,deadspin,lifehacker and jalopnik)who has suddenly found himself the scorn of a former jealous and one imagines scorned lover.
page 6: Gadfly Gawker Media head Nick Denton recently changed his Facebook status from single to “in a relationship,” but not everyone seems to be happy about it.
Sources say an angry ex of his new boyfriend tossed a brick through the window of Denton’s SoHo loft building recently, and has been causing enough further trouble that the police have been contacted.
Not to drift too much from Nick but I too was quite aghast when I decided to publicly note that I was no longer single but in a relationship on Facebook (for some reason I was quite surprised by the number of people who responded to what I perceived to be something really quite arbitrary and of little consequence in the world scheme of things, but yes people do pay attention it seems) which perhaps might explain the sudden attention that Mr Denton received when he publicly decided to note that he was in fact now no longer a pedophile or single.
Of course who also noted one assumes is a scorned former lover of the media titan who felt compelled enough to go smashing bricks into his former lover’s abode. And perhaps with good reason as it appears Mr Denton’s attentions have now turned to presumably a nimble agile and quite pretty young man ( 28 year old Derrence Washington) who it appears is an English actor here in NYC on tour (permanent tour one supposes).
What perhaps make the intrusion even more charming (not to suggest they are ever charming) is Mr Denton’s own acknowledgment that he is now being served the same dish he is well known famous for serving up on a regular basis.
When we asked Denton about the incidents, he told us via e-mail: “After that Hulk Hogan sex tape on Gawker, I can hardly complain about intrusion into my private life!
“Yep, love is messy,” he added.
Indeed love and gossip are quite messy but that said I’m betting Mr Denton is loving every minute of it. If I could suggest one thing Mr Denton, perhaps if you were to send a bouquet to the former lover it may temper their ire. I know it worked for me once. Oh dear…
above image found here
———————————————————————————
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NICK DENTON SAYS, ON CAMERA, TO NBC, THAT HE MAKES A LIVING DESTROYING PEOPLE:
Is blogger John Herrmann a hired character assassin hit-man for Nick Denton?
By Powers Destin
First printed in The LA Rebuke
If you look up John Herrmann in Wikipedia you find that, according to Wkipedia:
“…Herrmann soon was a part of the Ware group, a secret apparatus of the CPUSA and Comintern in Washington, D.C., which supplied classified information to Soviet intelligence. …Herrmann was a paid courier for the CPUSA, delivering material emanating from the secret cells of sympathetic government employees being cultivated by Hal Ware to New York. Herrmann also was the person who introduced … Alger Hiss.
…The Ware group’s activities were investigated …and Herrmann was placed under surveillance and questioned many times in Mexico by the FBI. He died …. from chronic alcoholism.”
That isn’t the exact same John Herrmann we know and love from Gawker Media and the Awl, but there may be eerie similarities to the Nick Denton hit-man.
This New Yorker is said to be a shill for Gawker Media, where he writes attack articles at the request of White House press corps, in order to stealth up the true instigators of the attacks. It is also claimed, that he goes online, under a massive number of pseudonyms, and writes all of the attack comments in the commenting section of the blog under each attack article. IS this true? To confirm this, one would need to subpeona FBI and NSA phone tracking and email archiving of Herrmann’s email and cell phone activities from past years.
Many targets have stated that Herrmann organizes other writers when given a “kill order” by his political handlers. They infest a blog, together, with vitriol and hate, cobbled together from non-verified facts and manipulated heresay, it is said by those he has sought to bring down.
One encounters Herrmann as a pasty, pudgy little man with the hipster affectations of dark mood swings and impertinent denial. We met him, covertly, at a coffee shop nestled among the metropolitan masses.
Does he report directly to Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney at the White House or are his orders intermediated only through Nick Denton? Only a Senate investigation has the power to uncover the tentacular connections of the attack bloggers of the web.
In this writers opinion,and mind you, these are all opinions and not facts, so do your own research, I think that Mr, Herrmann is complex and deserves more study. It is easy for one to dismiss him as a sad internet hack, one step removed from a common troll, but that would be unfair, I think. He is, most likely, much more interesting.
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The case addresses the breakdown of privacy in multiple ways. Hogan is claiming the tort of intrusion upon seclusion (usually analogized by the paparazzo who uses a telephoto lens to peek into a private residence) and also is asserting a claim under Florida’s Wiretap Act because Gawker published a recording that was filmed secretly. Can journalists use illegal recordings? In 2001, the Supreme Court suggested they could, as long as they only played the role of recipient — an opinion (Bartnicki v. Vopper) that recently provided confidence for those reporting on hacked Sony documents. But Hogan’s attorney Charles Harder points out the high court expressly exempted First Amendment protection on sex tapes and “domestic gossip or other information of purely private concern.”
What rises above gossip to be newsworthy? Gawker asserts that it had every right to publish the video because it was evidence of adultery that received widespread media attention before Gawker’s publication. The defendant also says Hogan participated in the discussion of the affair by denying it happened — potentially making the video needed corroboration. “The tell-all journalist in me is glad we’ll have the opportunity to air out the issues in public,” says Denton, who already has spent more than $1 million on the case (and had to sue his insurers to pick up some of the tab).
For Denton, who founded Gawker in 2003, the trial represents perhaps the most significant risk to his company. He settled a suit over an Eric Dane-Rebecca Gayheart sex tape that Gawker posted, but he says he found Hogan’s demands unreasonable. (Neither side will say what Hogan wanted.) Now, the fate of his company could be in the hands of Florida jurors who will be told that Google searches for “Gawker” reached a historic high around the time of the Hogan sex tape story. “It is time to put an end to the immoral bullies who use the First Amendment as a means to destroy privacy and decency,” says David Houston, a Hogan attorney.
Denton estimates there’s a 1-in-10 chance Gawker faces “disaster.” Any loss will be appealed, but Gawker might have to post a substantial bond in the interim. At trial, the focus likely will be on how Gawker got the tape, what it knew about it, how it used it to its advantage, and Hogan’s injuries, if any (the potential $100 million comes from the punitive damages that Hogan has requested). Denton’s team likely will attempt to frame all this in the context of free speech. Legal observers like Thurston say that Gawker would have the upper hand in any post-trial appeal (the judge’s preliminary injunction was reversed by a Florida appeals court), but the more immediate problem for Gawker is that the jury won’t take up its constitutional arguments that Hogan’s claims interfere with the freedom of the press. Thus, a trial verdict could exert financial pressure on a media company that has prided itself on being as independent as possible.
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Gawker counters that Hogan made his sexual exploits a public matter, noting his appearances on Howard Stern’s radio program and elsewhere during which he delved into lurid details from his personal life.
During a 2011 interview with Stern, Hogan said flatly that he would never have sex with Heather Clem. “Man law, brother,” Hogan told Stern. “Even if they were divorced for 10 years.” In the same interview, Hogan opened up about the sexual chemistry with his wife.
Gawker is also highlighting the fact that the existence of the sex tape had been the subject of several news reports before it was posted on the site in 2012.
“It’s difficult to think of a huge news story about a celebrity or a politician or someone people care about that didn’t involve some information that that person did not want disclosed,” Gawker president and general counsel Heather Dietrick told CNNMoney. “That’s the job of a journalist.”
The stakes: Hogan is seeking $100 million in damages, a penalty that could bring Gawker to its knees. Denton has been characteristically candid about the threat against the company, telling The New York Times, “We don’t keep $100 million in the bank, no.”
If it were to lose in court and have to pay in full, Gawker might be forced to do something it has managed to avoid throughout its existence: rely on outside investors to keep the company humming.
The case could also hold implications for the First Amendment, with some in the legal community leery over the idea of a story’s news value being determined by jurors, not editors.
But Harder, Hogan’s attorney, asserts that the case poses “no potential danger whatsoever to the First Amendment.”
“The First Amendment has limitations,” Harder said. “In Florida, it is a crime of video voyeurism to film someone naked without their permission, or to publish that footage. Doing so is against the law and not protected by the First Amendment.”
Outlook: Denton isn’t ruling out a “disaster” scenario for the site. He has acknowledged that the jury, plucked from the Florida community that Hogan calls home, might well be unsympathetic to a sensationalist digital tabloid based in Manhattan and built on snark.
1TRACKBACKS & PINGBACKS
British Elite Political Pedophiles and Phone Hacking Connections
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Is blogger John Herrmann a hired character assassin hit-man for Nick Denton?
Is blogger John Herrmann a hired character assassin hit-man for Nick Denton?
By Powers Destin
First printed in The LA Rebuke
If you look up John Herrmann in Wikipedia you find that, according to Wkipedia:
“…Herrmann soon was a part of the Ware group, a secret apparatus of the CPUSA and Comintern in Washington, D.C., which supplied classified information to Soviet intelligence. …Herrmann was a paid courier for the CPUSA, delivering material emanating from the secret cells of sympathetic government employees being cultivated by Hal Ware to New York. Herrmann also was the person who introduced … Alger Hiss.
…The Ware group’s activities were investigated …and Herrmann was placed under surveillance and questioned many times in Mexico by the FBI. He died …. from chronic alcoholism.”
That isn’t the exact same John Herrmann we know and love from Gawker Media and the Awl, but there may be eerie similarities to the Nick Denton hit-man.
This New Yorker is said to be a shill for Gawker Media, where he writes attack articles at the request of White House press corps, in order to stealth up the true instigators of the attacks. It is also claimed, that he goes online, under a massive number of pseudonyms, and writes all of the attack comments in the commenting section of the blog under each attack article. IS this true? To confirm this, one would need to subpeona FBI and NSA phone tracking and email archiving of Herrmann’s email and cell phone activities from past years.
Many targets have stated that Herrmann organizes other writers when given a “kill order” by his political handlers. They infest a blog, together, with vitriol and hate, cobbled together from non-verified facts and manipulated heresay, it is said by those he has sought to bring down.
One encounters Herrmann as a pasty, pudgy little man with the hipster affectations of dark mood swings and impertinent denial. We met him, covertly, at a coffee shop nestled among the metropolitan masses.
Does he report directly to Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney at the White House or are his orders intermediated only through Nick Denton? Only a Senate investigation has the power to uncover the tentacular connections of the attack bloggers of the web.
In this writers opinion,and mind you, these are all opinions and not facts, so do your own research, I think that Mr, Herrmann is complex and deserves more study. It is easy for one to dismiss him as a sad internet hack, one step removed from a common troll, but that would be unfair, I think. He is, most likely, much more interesting.
