Hulk Hogan’s team thinks Gawker turmoil may bring a takedown
Gabe Ginsberg/Getty ImagesHulk Hogan took Gawker to court after the site posted a sex tape of him.
Everyone in New York seems to be following this week’s jaw-dropping and extremely public meltdown at Gawker Media — but none more closely than Hulk Hogan’s lawyers, who are set to battle the site in a $ 100 million lawsuit.
Confidenti@l has learned that the WWE superstar’s legal team is considering using the scandal — in which Nick Denton’s news site sensationally published, then deleted, a report about a married Condé Nast executive who allegedly solicited sex with a male porn star — as part of the case against Gawker for posting a Hogan sex tape.
The suit is expected to hinge on whether Gawker can show that the 2012 video of the Hulkster in a romantic wrestling match with Heather Clem, estranged wife of his one-time pal Bubba Clem, was newsworthy enough to justify an invasion of privacy.
Now insiders accurate to Hogan’s attorneys say the scandal is a dramatic, though not unprecedented, example of Gawker’s inconsistency about what it considers newsworthy. Our sources say that Hogan’s (real name Terry Bollea) legal eagles are particularly taking note that on this occasion, Gawker seemed to flip-flop within 24 hours on whether the Condé Nast report was newsworthy.
After the report was removed from the site on Monday, Denton posted a statement calling it an “unjustifiable outing of a private individual in turmoil, in front of a potential audience of millions.”
Bloomberg via Getty ImagesGawker founder Nick Denton acknowledges the Hogan suit is a foremost threat.
He also called it “a report that was pure poison to our reputation just as we go into the Hogan trial.”
The stakes are high. Denton admitted in an interview with the Day after day Beast earlier this year that he believed there was a “one in ten chance of disaster” for the site, if the trial, which was recently postponed, doesn’t go his way.
While the Condé Nast case may play a part in Hogan’s strategy when trial starts, our sources point out that the case against Gawker will be firmly focused on the infamous Hogan tape itself. Regardless of the Condé Nast scandal, Hogan’s lawyers “feel extremely confident in the case. They believe in this case whether this happened or not.”
Since the Condé Nast report was removed, Gawker’s editor-in-chief, Max Read, and executive editor, Tommy Craggs, both resigned, who said the choice to yank the piece was due to Denton’s effort to hang on to advertisers. The two said “they could not possibly guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.”
This access passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Day after day News – Gossip
