Friday night the new owners of Gawker Media voted to take down six stories that are the subject of litigation.
Advertisement
“Following our acquisition of assets from Gawker Media, we have chose to take down select articles that are the subject of pending litigation against the prior owners”, Univision said in a statement.
Removal of the postings required a vote of the interim general counsel, interim CEO, and the executive editor in line with Gawker’s collective bargaining agreement.
“At this time of transition, the decision was based on a desire to have a clean slate as we look to support and grow the editorial missions of the acquired brands”, Univision said in a statement.
Cook’s memo said he had voted to retain the postings and removing them was a mistake.
Gawker Media executive editor John Cook said two Univision executives voted to remove at least six articles from Gizmodo, Jezebel and Deadspin published between 2011 and 2014.
The fifth post concerns conservative blogger Charles Johnson, who is suing Gawker Media for defamation after it published a rumor that he defecated on the floor of a dormitory in college. “The Guild and its members at the former Gawker Media sites are deeply troubled by this”. As Gizmodo noted, Gawker has been a strong critic of other sites for bowing to outside pressure and deleting posts.
Gawker Media was forced to declare bankruptcy after being slapped with a $140 million judgment by a Florida jury, following a lawsuit by professional wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Gene Bollea) accusing Gawker of invasion of privacy for publishing a sex tape Bollea claims was made without his knowledge. Three of the seven stories on Gizmodo probed an alleged fraudster for claiming he invented email and a California court defining Uber drivers as employees, not contractors while one story from Jezebel addressed a lawsuit targeting a legal blog for labeling an acquited lawyer “a rapist”.
On Saturday, links to the six postings said, “This story is no longer available as it is the subject of pending litigation against the prior owners of this site”. The article pages have removed the headlines and body copy; they continue to serve ads and include reader comments.
Advertisement
“When Univision acquired the assets of Gawker Media Group, it did so with the understanding that it would not inherit any risk of liability for pending cases”.
