It was surprising to hear the news last week that right-wing billionaire investor Peter Thiel has been secretly trying to destroy Gawker Media through proxy lawsuits. It was dispiriting, and less surprising, to hear the conversation that followed the revelation. The discussion begins, in most cases, with the premise that Gawker is bad. Even those who are rightly alarmed at Thiel’s unprecedented attack on an institution that he regards as “terrible for the Valley” usually feel the need to preface that conclusion with some form of “I hate to defend Gawker, but...”
It’s an understandable habit. Gawker Media has not put a lot of effort, over the years, into being likable. We have earned a long list of enemies.
But the notion that Gawker Media—the company, encompassing seven web sites, that Thiel is attempting to permanently silence—is best understood as a platform for spewing hatred, or for bullying, is at odds with our own experience. And we can’t help but conclude it is at odds with a lot of other people’s experience. If our lengthy published record of news, essays, investigations, satire, and criticism is “not journalism,” as the refrain goes, then why has so much of it been cited, amplified, and followed by our more respectable establishment peers? If we aim for nothing but cruelty, or nothing but clicks, why have our writers drawn so many of the finest (or most well-remunerated) writers in the rest of the business to engage with our work?
Advertisement
Journalism is as journalism does. Anyone moved to dismiss the million-plus stories that we have published over the years as nothing more than “gutter journalism” ought to account for the by-no-means-comprehensive sampling of posts below, which we have arranged along with examples of the contemporaneous reaction to, praise for, and impact of the work. There are countless other posts that could join them. This is what Peter Thiel is trying to destroy.
“In 2013, his fame, long established in Canada, spread to the United States after Gawker, followed closely by the Toronto Star, reported the existence of a video depicting the mayor smoking crack. For six months, Ford denied the allegation, before finally admitting to using the drug “in one of my drunken stupors.”
“We’ve all heard about Billo and Fox Security, but this is ridiculous” — Keith Olbermann, ESPN
“To anyone who hasn’t seen Gawker’s awesome takedown of Bill O’Reilly, here’s Gawker’s awesome takedown of Bill O’Reilly” — Hadley Freeman,The Guardian
“Surprised conservatives still watch Fox News. The non-family values network, run by Ailes, a guy married 3 times.” — Gabriel Sherman, New York Magazine
“This is the bigger story, because it demonstrates aforethought and a conscious decision to evade public detection.” — John Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine
“Gawker also FOIAed top Clinton aide Reines’ communications with reporters, only to be told they didn’t exist.” — Byron Tau, The Wall Street Journal
“The documents are a fascinating look in the construction of image building. Even back then, Ailes had his signature impassioned style, writing that they were responsible for the life or death of America.” — The Washington Post
“Gawker’s John Cook has unearthed a juicy White House memo—‘A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News’—that shows Roger Ailes and fellow aides to Richard Nixon plotting to disseminate Republican propaganda to local news outlets nationwide.” — Rolling Stone
“Gawker’s John Cook makes the case the Ailes’s ‘fair and balanced’ network comes from the same skeazy political scheming that lead to the Watergate scandal.” — The Atlantic Wire
“Roger Ailes’ ‘fair and balanced’ alternative to what he calls the liberal bias of other news outlets was far from an overnight success. In fact, according to documents obtained by Gawker, his idea for a conservative news source was conceived in 1970, when Ailes worked as a media consultant for then-President Richard Nixon.” — The Week
Deadspin’s decision to publish what were said to be photographs of Brett Favre’s penis has become easy shorthand for reckless and invasive journalism. As Vanity Fair wrote, in a feature on Manti Te’o, “Deadspin itself sometimes seems devoid of any standards of taste or ethics—it has practiced checkbook journalism and has published alleged ‘dong shots’ Brett Favre reportedly texted to a woman.”
That account, though, skips over the fact that the penis photos were sent unsolicited, in an act of alleged workplace harassment of a New York Jets employee, and that the news of Favre’s behavior led other employees to speak up, and eventually file suit, accusing the NFL legend of persistent and aggressive misbehavior.
In the wake of a sex scandal that tarnished Brett Favre’s storied 20-year NFL career and cost him a $50,000 fine, two more women have come forward, filing a sexual harassment suit against the star quarterback.
Christina Scavo and Shannon O’Toole, both former massage therapists for the New York Jets, filed suit against Favre, the New York Jets and Lisa Ripi, a woman who hires massage therapists for the team, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York today.
