There’s been a lot of controversy over the decision of Gawker Media to remove a controversal post. (Quick summary: Gawker posts an item about an executive and a gay escort, the internet gets upset, Gawker scrubs the post, their editorial side gets upset.) So what is your opinion? I think the story should have never run in the first place. I would have also removed it from the website, but would have included it as a link on an explainatory story so that it didn’t disappear.
It was a pretty shitty story to run. The executive was being blackmailed by the escort. The escort turns to Gawker with flimsy proof. The executive (who works for Conde Nast, that owns rival(?) Reddit) is named, no punches pulled. The escort was not.
The story was probably pulled because Gawker will probably get sued - keeping the story up will only increase the damages in the law suit.
The story should never have been published in the first place. Naming the victim of a blackmail attempt is pretty crappy under any circumstances, and outing someone as gay at the same time makes it even worse. (Especially since, IIRC, the guy is married to a woman and has kids.)
I can’t see that there was any public interest in naming the victim, and can’t imagine why gawker thought this was even vaguely acceptable, let alone a good idea. Cheating on your partner with an escort is a bad idea (not least because of the waste of money - the guy wasn’t cheap!) but it’s not like the victim the first guy to get caught attempting to screw other people; it’s not really exciting news to anyone other than the people involved. And if the escort had been female, I doubt this would have been published.
I think the more likely reason it got pulled was because of the backlash from readers and commentators. The internet creates almighty levels of backlash. Attempts are already being made to put pressure on Gawker avertisers. The interesting thing about this backlash is it is coming from both the left and right. Usually you have one side defending whilst the story whilst the other attacks. In this instance almost no-one is defending Gawker.
The story was disgusting. There was no public interest. Gawker is a soulless clickbait mill for talentless hacks. Everyone involved should be fired.
yeah, this. we’re not talking about another Larry Craig here. the CFO of Conde Nast has practically no bearing on anyone’s lives. Running the story at all just seemed like Gawker taking a petty swipe at a competitor.
Gawker is just a shitty, shitty place in general. They desperately want to be taken seriously as a legitimate news source (if snarky), but whenever you scratch the surface, you get this nasty streak of high school-level bullshit. I can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone decided that publishing this story was a good idea, particularly because, as I understand it, the guy in question REFUSED to grant political favors under threat of exposure. He did the right thing, and Gawker just went along and destroyed his life for it.
Gawker and the story both basically suck but once it was put up I think it just should have been left up. There is no such thing as “delete” after all - its still there (WaybackMachine) and probably getting more attention now than if folks had just said “meh” and moved on.
Yeah, as vile as that article was I have to agree. At this point, taking the story down doesn’t do anything for Geithner. The damage has already been done. All deleting the story does is make it marginally more difficult for people to find out just what kind of scumbags write for Gawker.
However, this, taken in tandem with their refusal to admit liability by actually apologising, does rather suggest that Gawker is bracing itself for a(nother) lawsuit. I hope they get taken to the fucking cleaners.
I hope this isn’t hijacking and you know I’m sure I’ve been to Gawker before to read an article, but for the uninitiated what kind of things does Gawker in general publish, do they swing a certain way politically?
They publish all kinds of things. You’ll never believe #17!!!
they’re little more than tabloid/gossip shit. they exist to feed our collective need to tear down famous people. unfortunately, a few sites I do like (Jalopnik, io9) are part of the Gawker shitpile.
We may be drifting and if one of the mods wants to knock me, I’m OK with it.
Not really; they seem to be equal-opportunity scum.
I wonder what the overall track record is for lawsuits against them. Anyone have strong enough Google-fu to find a solid won/lost/still in play for them?
To win this one I would think you would almost have to prove that
a) Had this been someone with no political ties whatsoever they wouldn’t have run the story
b) Had the “porn star” been a woman they wouldn’t have run the story
Given what I read of the Gawkers history I don’t know that either is a good bet.
The only thing that actually looks like strong evidence of guilt (at least moral if not legal) on their part is that they yanked the story.
Well, they’re currently facing a sex-tape lawsuit from Hulk Hogan that could bankrupt them if they lose. This latest screwup probably isn’t going to help their chances much.
It was a terrible story to run but (IMO) for Gawker (IMO) it was irresistible candy as it involved a huge embarrassment for the CFO of the owner (Conde Nast) of it’s arch enemy Reddit. It was just too tasty for them to resist.
The somewhat puzzling thing to me re the article is Gawker’s weird attitude toward gay shaming. Gawker is owned by a gay man and has a huge presence of gay men at the managerial and editorial levels and still this story, the ultimate gay shame trainwreck for a closeted gay man, got a pass.
Having said all this the breathtaking thing to me in the initial story was that Gawker exposed the CFO without a pause, but kept the blackmailers name secret as if he was some courageous whistleblower they needed to protect. That was a WTF moment in reading the article.
Also in reading the story it’s pretty clear this porn star loving, common sense deficit CFO started scrambling when he realized he was in the clutches of a vicious loon. You would think that there would be some level of resonant sympathy for him in company culture run by a gay man and there was apparently none. The story was positively delighted with itself in screwing this closeted moth to the wall.
With respect to the reader pushback if this was Joe Conservative I think the response would have been “go get 'em”. The vibe I got in the Gawker comments was that a large number of the initial angry commenters were gay men who were feeling, whether in out of the closet “There but for the grace of God go I”. I think the anger was at such tsunami levels for this group because it was underpinned by a sense of betrayal. Gawker largely run by gay people was supposed to be, at least hypothetically, gay friendly. This was like having a trusted relative stab you in the eye *then *throw you under the bus .
There are activists who feel that closeted gays contribute to the moral denunciation they often face from bigoted straight people, by attempting to pass as straight due to shame, etc. Gawker may well be gay-friendly and, as such, closeted people may be targeted precisely due to so being.
I’m pretty ambivalent about it all. If you follow any of the GM mainpages, there’s usually some kind of ethical fuckery that detracts from the pieces they make that are intelligent. I enjoy the community there most out of anywhere else on the internet, so hopefully this (and the Hogan case that they’ll probably win on appeal should they lose) doesn’t kill the sub-blogs, but most of them are already looking into moving should the hammer fall on GM and kinja as a whole. I don’t know what any of the editorial staff was thinking on gawker prime, but they were idiots, and this post by Adam Weinstein is a very good insidery look at what’s going wrong there within edit.
It doesn’t make a terribly huge difference but I was under the assumption/impression Geithner was bisexual and the general feeling from most of the rest of us is that he’s a closeted gay trying to pass. Is there actual evidence anywhere one way or another?
It’s a shitty story, but is there really a viable lawsuit here? If the facts are true, it seems like a libel suit would fail.
No, that makes him worse. I’ve noticed this chain of hypocrisy before: a man cheating on his wife with another woman is scum; a woman cheating on her husband with another man is defended; a man cheating on his wife with another man is a victim of heteronormative society. Bullshit. He’s an asshole for cheating on his wife with a prostitute even if that prostitute’s a man.