Breaking Down Nick Denton's (Gawker's Founder) Response To The Hogan-Gawker Verdict

And so starts Nick Denton’s long and interesting reaction to the Gawker-Hogan trial verdict, where Hogan was awarded 140 million dollars after Gawker Media put up a secretly-recorded sex tape. It was an interesting way to start his blog, as I do agree that the tape would have been forgotten about, or at least faded into obscurity, had his website not boasted about blogging it and then bragged about not taking it down despite a judge’s orders. So that one is kind of on you, Nick.

His blog covers a lot of ground and has new information that wasn’t presented to the jury, all which helps his case. It’s this second paragraph which is particularly interesting, because of one sentence, and one man, AJ Daulerio:

If you are new to this case, AJ Daulerio was the editor in chief of Deadspin, and the man who made a joke about a 4 year old having a sex tape while under oath. Daulerio hurt Gawker’s case more than any witness they called to the stand, on either side. He was smug, he was arrogant, unapologetic, and the way he conducted himself was in a word, bizarre.

Now, despite how he acted and what he said on the stand, I’ve thought a lot about this, as a jury decided Daulerio owes Hogan $100,000 in punitive damages. Meaning the jury is holding AJ personally responsible for the tape going up, and want to punish him for such. This is where it gets tricky for me, a blogger. I would compare AJ to if Dave Portnoy aka El Pres was the man in charge of Barstool, but without any of the ownership. Just a blogger who rose through the ranks and had a title like “editor in chief” but wasn’t also a multi-millionaire on the side. Nick Denton is the multi-millionaire, and AJ was his employee. I’m having a tough time deciding in my mind if Daulerio, just a blogger, was a product of Deadspin, and if he as a blogger should be held personally responsible for content that goes on the site.

Where I agree the most with Gawker’s side of this entire case is this is the Internet. You do things, often times anything and everything, for pageviews. Get that traffic up. Get that advertiser money. And it was much different even 4 years ago. The Internet is still the wild, wild west. Back then, it was even more so. So while his conduct on the stand was awful, it’s unnerving that he, the blogger, personally has to pay for a decision that ultimately should fall on Nick Denton. Yes, there is personal responsibility, ethics, morals, and all of that which you need to consider as well. But Denton is the self-proclaimed “publisher”. He set the rules, he stroked the checks, he was the ultimate decision maker. So while I don’t know much about the real life AJ Daulerio, and based just on the trial he comes off as a scumbag, a part of me feels he got a raw deal by being told to pay Hogan $100,000.

Ok, let’s carry on:

And that, right there, is the meat and potatoes of the entire thing. Denton is claiming that there is evidence, which will be presented in appeals court, that the lawsuit was not because Hogan was embarrassed, but because he knew that the tape where he unleashed a few N-bombs was out there, and he wanted to dissuade sites from putting it up. It would not shock me if Hogan’s lawsuit was a calculated play to build back public support. I think you’d have to be stupid not to consider that a possibility. How do you recover from a tape where you drop some N-bombs? You get sympathy from the public over your personal life being intruded on.

Furthermore,

that. Denton is claiming that Hogan basically lied the entire time about knowing if he was being filmed or not. If that is true and Hogan was aware of the fact he was being taped, obviously the entire case is a sham. Based on the evidence presented at trial, Hogan did not know. I do not think if you are secretly taped having sex that the tape is fair game. I do think it becomes a little bit different if you are aware of the fact it’s being taped. I still don’t think it means that Denton had the explicit right to put it on the Internet, but if Hogan was lying about knowing it was being filmed, that does change a lot of things.

But this is where I call bullshit:

I buy in to the theory that if you don’t like publicity, don’t be a celebrity. I agree with that. But Denton is full of shit when he says “regardless of questions about Gawker’s editorial standards and methods”. No sir. You can’t just skim over that, because Gawker’s huge reason behind posting the tape is that it was “newsworthy”. Denton repeatedly calls Gawker and what they do “journalism”. But when it comes to “journalism”, they failed every single test of what qualifies as journalism. And that paragraph, the above, in other words is saying “if you are a celebrity, your right to privacy in a private bedroom gets thrown out the window”. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because you are a celebrity should not mean every detail of your life is public domain. I don’t know anyone who would buy that argument. That I could sneak into someone famous’ house, set up a camera, and say “no it’s cool, they’re famous, I’m allowed to do this”.

I’ve gotten questions about how I think this outcome changes 1) what we do at Barstool, and 2) about how it’s similar/different than when Pres posted a picture of Tom Brady’s child running around naked on a beach with his howitzer out. Well for 1), hopefully nothing. There aren’t enough fingers and toes in the world to count how many times Portnoy has said “we aren’t journalists, we don’t do journalism”. We’re a satire blog. We take things from the Internet, and put them elsewhere on the Internet, or make our own original content. Very rarely are we in the breaking news business or out to get people. Gawker outs people for being gay, pays for dick pictures, etc. We don’t do that. We’ll blog about it once it happens, but we don’t pay for dick pics and call ourselves journalists in the process. And 2) I see where people could think it’s similar, but I don’t think it’s that close. Those pictures were taken on a public beach, and were already on the Internet before Barstool. Gawker took it upon themselves to post the Hogan tape, and then not remove it after told by his lawyer it was secretly filmed without Hogan’s permission, and then wrote a blog saying “fuck you” to the judge who ordered they take it down. While both the tape and the Ben Brady pics brought a lot of publicity to both sites, that’s basically the only similarity.

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I hope I didn’t forget anything in this blog, there’s a lot going on and many layers to delve into.

So now the trial goes to appeal, where more evidence will be presented and Gawker will try not to go out of business.