After figuring out who his client was, the story goes, the prostitute attempted to coerce Geithner into using his brother’s political connections to help with a legal dispute, which Geithner refused to do.
Advertisement
The lone dissenter was Gawker Media Executive Editor Tommy Craggs, who had a hand in editing the post. Denton defended Gawker’s publishing of that tape, but Denton said that “can’t defend yesterday’s story as I can our coverage of Bill O’Reilly, Hillary Clinton or Hulk Hogan”. In retaliation, the prostitute gave (sold?) the story to Gawker’s Jordan Sargent, who is apparently perfectly fine being the instrument of retribution for an attempted shakedown. Some critics shared it via archive.is so that people interested in the issue didn’t need to send traffic to Gawker.
Soon after, others were not as kind to the site, including journalist Glenn Greenwald and Girls star Lena Dunham.
And Kara Swisher, the gay Re/Code edtior added: ‘An appalling act of gay shaming disguised as a story – thought we were way past this crap.’.
Gawker owner Nick Denton and at least some of his employees were proud of their work-though former senior writer Adam Weinstein took the opportunity to critique the site and publicly announce that he was fired late last month.
‘I would not have chosen to run it as it is, ‘ he said.
“This guy is not an antigay politician whose hypocrisy needs to be outed”.
I will not link to the Gawker report itself because I don’t want them to be rewarded for aiding blackmailers. If this escort had come to you with dirt on the CFO of Gawker Media sleeping around, there is no way in hell you would have published that.
Meanwhile, the backlash against Gawker is baffling to some writers who view the angle about a man married to a female in Larchmont, New York – as says David’s profile on Condé Naste – being newsworthy and relevant.
Advertisement
The online furor comes amid a fresh debate about the line between free expression on the Internet, and curbing harmful and hateful treatment of individuals online.
