The professional wrestler Hulk Hogan died Thursday at 71. Among other things, Hogan’s death has prompted reminders that he, with the help of secret financing from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, pursued a lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, a website that trafficked in gossip, sleaze and occasionally important investigative reporting. In 2016 I wrote a commentary for GBH News arguing that Hogan and Thiel weren’t quite the bad guys they seemed, and that Gawker’s behavior truly was reprehensible. Here is that column again.
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Sympathy for the Devil: Billionaire Peter Thiel versus Gawker versus the First Amendment
GBH News | June 1, 2016
Does Hulk Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy suit against the news-and-gossip site Gawker threaten the First Amendment? No. But the way his case is being paid for might.
Last week we learned that Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, had provided about $10 million to help fund Hogan’s case. Such third-party financing is legal, and it proved to be a sound investment: in March, a Florida jury found that Gawker had invaded Hogan’s privacy by publishing a video of him and a friend’s wife without permission and awarded him $140 million.