How private billionaires are weakening the free press
There’s no battle raging in the country right now quite like the one between the White House and the press. While I’m only 35, I can’t remember another time when the press was so adversarial towards a sitting president. Of course, almost all of the animosity between the two is earned by the thin-skinned politician who labels any negative coverage as fake news.
The press doesn’t take these attacks lying down, and since lying is the president’s forte, there is almost nothing but negative press. It’s no wonder that the White House would choose to limit their contact with the fourth estate. The Trump administration can’t win if the man at the top is always distracted by unflattering news.
A testy relationship between the wealthy (and the president is the grotesque poster child for wealth) and the media is nothing new—the purpose of the press is to speak truth to power and the power always lies with the rich.
A new Netflix documentary, Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press explores these ideas, although the story centers on a largely indefensible company. Still, there are enough issues in the film to consider it well worth your time. Like any good documentary, it forces you to consider things from a perspective you’d rather not.
There aren’t too many Americans unfamiliar with the character of Hulk Hogan. He was the first wresting superstar, “winning” titles during the golden era of wresting against other notable wrestlers like Andre the Giant and Macho Man Randy Savage. And like most wrestling superstars, as he aged, the shine came off his apple.
The past few years were rough for the Hulkster, with a marriage that appeared to dissolve in real time on his VH1 reality show, which ended up costing him an enormous amount of money. And then, in 2012, a sex tape between Hulk and the wife of a friend ended up online. More specifically, the video was published on the quasi-tabloid site Gawker.
Gawker is a media outlet that straddles the line between sensational yellow tinged journalism and legitimate news. They are responsible for terrible clickbait as well as occasional quality reporting.
Regardless, they defied multiple court orders to remove the tape from their website, calling Hulk Hogan a public figure and therefore newsworthy. Hogan argued that the tape didn’t depict Hulk Hogan—it depicted Terry Bolea, Hulk’s real personality, and therefore was protected by privacy laws. In the end, Gawker was forced to pay Hogan a $31-million-dollar settlement, effectively bankrupting both the company and the editor-in-chief.
The result isn’t the interesting part, however.
Remember: Hogan was nearly bankrupt himself when he began the lawsuit due to a recent divorce. Lawsuits are expensive on both sides. Where did Hogan get the money to continue a five-year suit? The answer came in the form of Peter Thiel, a Silcon Valley billionaire who agreed to fund the lawsuit based on a personal vendetta against Gawker, who years earlier had outed him as gay. There’s no way Gawker would have lost without Thiel.
From here, the documentary makes an uneven pivot, away from the Gawker story towards the possibility of the rich and powerful to effectively end a media they dislike for negative coverage. Thiel, an avid Trump supporter, Randian libertarian, and investor in dubious life extending technologies, admitted his involvement in the case openly.
And while it’s hard for a moral person to take the side of Gawker, it’s easy to be uncomfortable with the power Thiel wielded in the case of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape.
Gawker is without a doubt an imperfect messenger for freedom of the press, much the way Hustler was imperfect in regards to obscenity and free speech. But Gawker was silenced by a marriage of a sympathetic judicial system and an angry billionaire. Given that our government is currently run by an angry billionaire who gets to appoint sympathetic judges, the case should at the very least give us pause. We might find Gawker repulsive, but the actions of Thiel and others like him might be worse.
The film ends with another case—the silent purchase of the Las Vegas Review Journal by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. The story is more serious than the Gawker story, in that it involves a significant political force and a traditional media outlet. The story is much the same, however. A rich man attempts to buy influence through controlling the media. It’s another unsettling step towards the disinformation that dominates the world right now.
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press shows where we’ve been and argues against where we’re going.