Hulkamania has reached the courtroom. A Florida jury awarded professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, $140 million in a case against Gawker.com over the website’s publication of a part of his sex tape, The New York Times reported. Hogan initially asked for $100 million. Fifty-five million dollars was awarded for economic harm, $60 million was awarded for emotional distress and $25 million was awarded Monday in punitive damages, according to the Times.
In 2006, Hulk Hogan filmed himself having sex with the wife of fellow professional wrestler Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Yes, that is his legal name. Gawker acquired the video and published it in 2012 in an article titled “Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed is Not Safe For Work but Watch it Anyway.”
Even after a circuit court ruled in 2013 for the video to be taken down, Gawker refused, citing the First Amendment freedom of speech. And now here we are.
Hogan’s lawyers argued that publishing the sex tape was an invasion of privacy and did not constitute real journalism. Gawker’s team argued that Hogan gave up his right to privacy by talking about his sex life so publicly.
Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, posted a piece on the website about the verdict and wrote that he will appeal the verdict due to evidence that hasn’t been introduced in court.
University at Buffalo law professor Samantha Barbas told the Times, “For a jury to say that a celebrity has a right to privacy that outweighs the public’s ‘right to know’ … represents a real shift in American free press law.”
This court ruling will likely ruin Gawker and set a precedent for other similar websites.
Everyone has a reasonable expectation of privacy. This means that no matter how much personal information someone chooses to disclose, they are still safe from being watched in a private setting such as a bedroom. Because Hogan wasn’t having sex in public, nobody has the right to watch him have sex in a place they normally wouldn’t have access to.
Gawker’s argument that Hogan’s sex tape was newsworthy and is protected under the First Amendment is weak. The public doesn’t have an urgent need — or even a desire — to know what Hogan was up to in his private life, let alone his sex life.
That being said, the amount of money Gawker owes Hogan is excessive. Gawker’s annual income is only $45 million, according to Business Insider. Being forced to pay Hogan millions of dollars it doesn’t have would put the company, and its founder, in deep debt. For a small website founded by geeks, that’s enough money to decimate any chances of Gawker thriving in a world after this case. The idea is to reprimand Gawker, not to put it out of business.
Paying Hogan $60 million for emotional distress is a bit much. If this incident hadn’t been brought to court, it would’ve remained just a small blip on the radar of the Hogan Empire. Hogan has horrible stories revealed about him everyday, but he’s only squeezing money out of a small website now. Gawker only released a minute’s worth of the sex tape public as well.
It’s not like the organization advertised and distributed the video to willing customers. Erin Andrews only got $55 million for a high-profile case that will be attached to her name for the rest of her life. Hogan is still insanely wealthy, and when people think “Hulk Hogan,” they’re still more likely to think “professional wrestler” than “sex tape.”
Because of this court decision, online news or entertainment outlets will likely be more careful about what they post. A whopping $140 million is enough to intimidate any business. Unless an organization has TMZ-level lawyers, the entertainment industry will be a little more carefully covered.
Let this be a lesson to Gawker, if the poor little website survives. Editorial content can have a profoundly negative impact on a news outlet if it isn’t thoroughly reviewed first. Just look how easy it was to have Gawker essentially blown to bits. But what did it expect when it took on a professional wrestler?
Your first sentence in the second paragraph is simply wrong and at the heart of the entire case – at least as I’ve followed it in the press (a ‘press’ that’s stopped doing a lot of the very basic blocking and tackling that’s core to its mission).
Hulk Hogan did NOT tape himself having sex, and he had no knowledge that he was being taped having sex … it was his (former, best) friend, Clem, who taped the act without his consent.
The tape leaked, and Gawker published it … and they published it without doing the basic work associated with understanding it as either appropriate to publish (meaning both parties knew and assented), or not appropriate (Hogan may have been set up and essentially entrapped).
Was Hogan’s behavior appropriate … that being having sex with his friend’s wife in the presence of his friend, or that he made racially insensitive comments? Those are very different questions.
Publishing the film was not done to ‘inform’ a society, it was purely perverted and intended to drive eyeball and profits towards Gawker … utterly NOT newsworthy.
The jury award was HUGE … Gawker played with fire and they got burnt … and so, a trashy, quasi-media, website will likely need to shut down and it’s sleazy management/ownership will scramble to cover a bond if they intend to appeal, and perhaps feel some of the extreme stress that they brought upon Hogan.
Come on Daily Free Press editors, you’re better than this … do your homework … this editorial was not your best effort.