STOP THE PRESS - 'The Hulk' vs Internet Moguls

"Hulk Hogan, media ethics and the battling Internet moguls" PBS NewsHour 5/30/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  When Hulk Hogan won $140 million in court from millionaire Nick Denton's Gawker Media after it published video of him having sex, the verdict raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.  Hogan's suit was funded by Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal who Gawker outed as gay a decade earlier.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Wired's Jason Tanz for more on the case and its implications.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  So, let's go over just basics of what happened in this case, because most people aren't following Hulk Hogan's sex tape saga too closely.

JASON TANZ, Editor-At-Large, WIRED:  Sure.

So, a few years ago, Gawker published an article that included a video of a sex tape that Hulk Hogan had made, actually was made without his knowledge.  They declared it was in the public interest because Hulk Hogan was a public figure and he had gone on record talking about how he had not had sex with this woman, and they had proof that he had.  So they published it, somewhat gleefully, which has always been Gawker's kind of stock and trade.

They have been very forward in their — in what they declare to be in the public interest.  And they thought this was.  Hulk Hogan didn't see things that way.  He brought a lawsuit against them.  The jury found against Gawker to the tune of $140 million, which was a pretty shocking about.

Gawker has appealed the case and they're waiting to see how that plays out.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  So, how does Peter Thiel get involved in this?  He — there's no love lost between the founder of Gawker, Nick Denton, and Peter Thiel.

JASON TANZ:  Nick Denton had suspected that there was actually somebody funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit, because the way Hogan was prosecuting the suit, he was making decisions that, if he were interested in making money, game theory suggests that he would have done something differently.

He could have taken reportedly about a $10 million settlement.  He also withdrew a part of the lawsuit that would have required a payout from Gawker's insurance.  They actually just withdraw that, so that Gawker would be on the hook and not the insurance company.

So, that indicated maybe there was something else going on.  In 2007, Gawker had — and, specifically, its site Valleywag had outed Peter Thiel as a gay man.  Thiel at the time swore his revenge.  And now, nine years later, he is getting it.  He had a team of lawyers who were looking for various plaintiffs who could file suits that they could fund, and apparently they found more than one.  Supposedly, there a couple of other suits out there that he's prepared to bring against Gawker as well.

BRITAIN - Tabloid Scandal Reaches Scotland Yard

"Police Bribe Probe Spurs High-Level Resignations at Scotland Yard"
PBS Newshour 7/18/2011

Excerpt form transcript

GARY GIBBON, Independent Television News: And this morning, Sean Hoare, a former News of the World reporter who had alleged that Andy Coulson himself personally asked him to tap into phones, was found dead at his home in Watford. He had a history of drink and drug problems. Police said the death was unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious.

"Not thought to be suspicious," really? How convenient.

BRITAIN - Dominoes Continue to Fall, Tabloid Scandal

"An Arrest and Scotland Yard Resignation Roil Britain" by SARAH LYALL and DON VAN NATTA Jr., New York Times 7/17/2011

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Britain’s top police official resigned on Sunday, the latest casualty of the phone-hacking scandal engulfing British public life, just hours after Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally intercepting phone calls and bribing the police.

The official, Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly known as the Met or Scotland Yard, said that he had decided to step down because “the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level” had made it difficult for him to do his job.

But he said that he had done nothing wrong and that he would not “lose sleep over my personal integrity.” He also said that because he had not been involved in the original phone-hacking investigation, he had had no idea that Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor who had become a public-relations consultant for the police after leaving the paper, was himself suspected of phone hacking.

Mr. Wallis, 60, was arrested last Thursday.

The commissioner’s resignation came as the London political establishment was still digesting the stunning news about the arrest of Ms. Brooks — who apparently was surprised herself. A consummate networker who has always been assiduously courted by politicians and whose friends include Prime Minister David Cameron, Ms. Brooks, 43, is the 10th and by far the most powerful person to be arrested so far in the phone-hacking scandal.

Her arrest is bound to be particularly wounding to Mr. Murdoch, who, asked early last week to identify his chief priority in the affair, pointed to Ms. Brooks and said, “This one.”

Ms. Brooks has not yet been formally charged, but it is significant that she is being questioned in connection with two separate investigations. One, called Operation Weeting, is examining allegations of widespread phone hacking at the News of the World, the tabloid at the center of the scandal, where Ms. Brooks was editor from 2000 to 2003. The other is Operation Elveden, which is looking into more serious charges that News International editors paid police officers for information.

Ms. Brooks has always maintained that she was unaware of wrongdoing at The News of the World, which was summarily closed by Mr. Murdoch a week ago in an unsuccessful damage-control exercise. But the tide rose against her, and on Friday she resigned, saying in a statement that her presence was “detracting attention” from the company.

There's one arrest I would like to see, Rupert Murdoch.

AMERICA - Another Call for News Corp Investigation

"Rep. Peter King Becomes First Republican To Call For News Corp Investigation" by Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress News Flash 7/13/2011

Joining a growing number of Democratic lawmakers seeking investigations into News Corp, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) today called for the FBI to investigate whether Rupert Murdoch’s company hacked into the voicemail accounts of 9/11 victims. “And as we approach 9/11, the tenth anniversary, it’s even going to get worse,” King told Politico, calling the allegations of hacking “disgraceful.”

This MAY be political grand-standing, but the question is appropriate.

BRITAIN - Ripples From Murdoch Sleaze Tabloid

"Victim’s Family Appears Amid Rage at Tabloids" by JOHN F. BURNS, New York Times 7/13/2011

Excerpt

On the day when Rupert Murdoch retreated from the biggest media takeover bid in Britain’s history, the wider significance that many here see for the way that power in the country is wielded found its most poignant expression in the sight of an ordinary family standing silently, subdued but assuaged at last, at the door of 10 Downing Street.

It had taken less than 10 days for the anger that swept Britain over the story of Milly Dowler’s cellphone to build into the political earthquake that forced Mr. Murdoch, the 80-year-old tycoon, to abandon the latest, and what could be the last, of his great business coups — an attempt to acquire the rest of British Sky Broadcasting for the News Corporation, the corporate giant that makes Mr. Murdoch one of the world’s most powerful news media figures.

The Dowlers had been shielded, until Wednesday, by their lawyer, Mark Lewis. He has fielded a frenzy of media questions since the news broke last week that, according to the police, a Murdoch-owned tabloid, The News of the World, had hacked into the voice-mail messages of the 13-year-old Milly after she was abducted in 2002 and while her family waited for some sign that she was still alive.

That sign came, the family thought, when the police told them that some of the messages they had left on the cellphone that Milly was carrying had been deleted. In reality, the police said, the messages were erased at the newspaper’s behest, to make room for more messages that could be hacked to embellish articles on her disappearance. Ms. Dowler was later found murdered.

In the years since, a faltering police investigation pointed to the Dowler case as only one of scores, possibly thousands, of cases in which ruthless newspapers, mainly The News of the World, have been accused of engaging in phone hacking in their relentless pursuit of scoops — as well as other covert newsroom tactics that may have included identity theft and bribery of police officers.

But now, the Dowlers were in the eye of the nation, greeted at 10 Downing Street by Prime Minister David Cameron.

They had been invited earlier for a meeting with the opposition leader, Ed Miliband, and welcomed as honored guests in the visitors’ gallery at the House of Commons. They became witnesses to the day when the cascading accusations about wrongdoing by newspapers in Mr. Murdoch’s British stable brought not only the withdrawal of his $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting, but also what many politicians hailed, perhaps without too much overstatement, as the day when the country’s long-skewed democratic balance began to be restored.