Arguably the biggest media story of the week has been Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel admitting to covering Hulk Hogan’s expenses in his trial against Gawker.
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A Florida judge on Wednesday denied Gawker’s motion for a new trial in the Hulk Hogan sex-video case and won’t reduce a $140 million jury verdict.
“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence”, said Thiel, who was outed as gay in a post on Gawker in 2007.
After seeing it publish articles about his friends and others, Thiel made a decision to fund a team of lawyers to help find and help “victims” of Gawker’s coverage mount cases against Gawker. Faced with significant legal expenses of its own, the media company said Thursday that it has hired an investment banker to review its options. The New York Times has also reported that Gawker Media is exploring a possible sale. Gawker has already been ordered to pay Hulk Hogan 0 million – a huge blow in and of itself.
If Thiel’s strategy works against Gawker, it could be used by any billionaire against any media organization.
Jason Tanz, editor-at-large for WIRED, told PBS NewsHour Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan that “Thiel at the time swore his revenge, and now, nine years later, he’s getting it”.
Thiel – a ibertarian who’s backing Donald Trump – didn’t specify the other cases he’s behind. Last year, Gawker landed in hot water for drumming up a sex scandal involving an executive at publisher Condé Nast and the brother of a former member of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
Gawker’s founder Nick Denton said he did not want to believe the theory, but when Hogan’s lawyer, Charles Harder, brought a different set of cases against Gawker’s writers and site properties, cases not even related to Hogan, he knew something sinister was in the offing. And for Thiel, who is going after Gawker over some not-so-nice stories written about him, bleeding the company dry could be just as important as Hogan’s right to privacy. They do not have the sophistication, and the thicker skins, of public figures in other older power centers such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Thiel has never hidden his contempt for Valleywag, a gossip site that Gawker periodically ran during the past decade to expose the secrets of Silicon Valley moguls, sometimes in salacious fashion.
Gawker noted in a statement Wednesday the irony that Thiel is a “major funder of The Committee to Protect Journalists”. “That’s highly unusual and I don’t think it’s a game-changer for anybody”, Paulson said.
He achieved demigod status among Silicon Valley business leaders, thanks largely to his role at PayPal, where he became the de facto don of the early employee group known as the PayPal mafia.
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In his open letter, Denton vowed to use an appeal of the Hogan verdict to subject Thiel to a “dose of transparency”.
