The Gawker case is the thin edge of a two-ton concrete repression wedge

The media outlet Gawker has been sentenced by a Florida jury to 115 million dollars in damages for publishing a sex tape of “Hulk Hogan” and not taking it down on a court order. What’s more, that’s before any punitive damages. This case is dangerous – it’s the thin edge of a two-ton concrete repression wedge, using the same cheap public opinion as Gawker is accused of using.

Gawker was accused of having stolen a sex tape and publishing it. You’re seeing gleeful schadenfreude about “stolen”, “pilfered”, and the like. That is both false and irrelevant: Hulk Hogan explored suing for copyright infringement, but realized it was a dead end, as he didn’t shoot the video – a friend of his did, without Hogan’s knowledge. Hogan has sued and settled with the friend in question for this. The material was not stolen or otherwise acquired in bad faith. Even if it were, though, the publication would still be legal – there is plenty of precedent establishing that the free press may publish what was handed to them legally, even if it was acquired illegally in an earlier step. See Wikileaks for a lot of the legal details on this.

A lot of people, not to mention news outlets, are focusing on the fact that this is a sex tape. That’s completely beside the point. It’s a private moment, yes. That doesn’t matter when you’re publishing about a public well-known person, especially not concerning a subject that the public person in question had discussed widely by themselves.

Another lot of people are expressing schadenfreude that this is happening to Gawker because they consider Gawker to be a clickbait outlet. That’s also completely beside the point.

The only thing that matters in this case is what Gawker’s editor-in-chief said:

I am not going to make a case that the future of the Republic rises or falls on the ability of the general public to watch a video of Hulk Hogan f✕king his friend’s ex-wife. But the Constitution does unambiguously accord us the right to publish true things about public figures.

This is the only thing that matters. This is the only thing that must matter.

To add to this, this is actually a rather weak protection of the press. Press in other countries are completely protected when they publish things about public figures that are objectively true or which they have good reason to believe are true, whether objectively true or not. Nevertheless, in the case where something is objectively true sense, United States press is protected when publishing.

I can’t really believe the United States is going through this immense erosion of Freedom of Press in an election year – and adding to it, an election year with a lot at stake. Technically, there’s not a lot of difference here between this Gawker publication and the WikiLeaks publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails on her private server. It’s just that some elements in the United States get into a hissy fit at anything remotely sexual and let poor impulse control cloud their judgment of much more important issues like Freedom of the Press.

Other people seem to be focusing on the damage caused to Hulk Hogan by this publication. Even if there were damage caused, that most definitely must not matter: Journalism, by its very definition, is publishing something that another person doesn’t want published. Everything else is just Public Relations and press releases.

Clear heads and eyes on the ball. This is about the Press’ right to publish facts about public people. Nothing else. Whether people consider those facts trashy, and the publishing outlet equally trashy, is beside the point.

The fact that this is a sex tape, and therefore appealing to basic public opinion rather than critically important principles, is allowing government to set a precedent where published inconvenient facts about a public person can be hit by multimillion-dollar damages. Is that really a precedent you want to carry into the next presidency?

Gawker has published a statement to the effect that it plans to appeal the ruling.