Gawker Files For Bankruptcy After Hulk Hogan Lawsuit

Gawker Media, after facing a contentious lawsuit from former wrestler Hulk Hogan, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday.

Gawker is now for sale, according to the New York Times and many others. Hogan launched the $140 million lawsuit in response to the media company deciding to publish a sex tape he had recorded, and he won the case in March. The judge presiding over the Hogan case denied Gawker’s request for a stay on Friday, according to the Washington Post.

Hogan’s legal battle has been largely funded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who had previously been outed as gay by Gawker in 2007, according to Quartz. Ziff Davis, a digital media company, has allegedly made on offer to purchase Gawker for as much as $100 million.

Ziff Davis is known for publishing PC Magazine and websites like AskMen.com. The company has apparently struggled with the shift from print publishing to digital media.

Gawker is filing for bankruptcy to protect the jobs of its current employees and prevent its sites from shutting down. Gawker will continue to operate while legal and financial issues are addressed.

Many have argued that Peter Thiel is funding lawsuits against Gawker in an attempt to get revenge on the company for what it has written about him. Thiel claims this is not the case.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Thiel said in a New York Times interview in May. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

Thiel said that he is able to defend himself against these kinds of attacks, but many people are not capable of doing so.

“They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can’t defend themselves,” Thiel said, “even someone like [Hulk Hogan] who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn’t quite have the resources to do this alone.”

Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s case has many concerned with how legal battles against media companies are funded. Some are concerned that having a billionaire or millionaire backer driving a lawsuit could mean that more wealthy people who don’t like certain media companies can make efforts to bankrupt those companies through other people’s cases.

In an op-ed about Thiel’s funding of Hogan’s lawsuit from May, Slate writer Justin Peters argued that journalists will be less likely to pursue controversial stories if there is a concern that the story may put the company they work for in serious legal trouble that is based solely on someone’s distaste for what the story contained.

“Thiel’s lawsuit-funding will have a chilling effect on journalists and journalism, not least by asserting the power of the richest and least accountable among us to define what constitutes acceptable discourse and to punish those who violate these arbitrary standards,” he wrote. “That’s something none of us should tolerate.”

Others have argued that Thiel is simply trying to fight for privacy rights. Thiel could set an example for media companies that outing someone or publishing their sex tape without their consent is not good for journalism and violates that person’s rights.

Gawker has previously published other articles that have made many people uncomfortable. A well known example is when Gawker published an article in 2015 focusing on a New York media executive who had allegedly solicited a male escort, according to the Huffington Post. Many didn’t see why the company would publish such a story about someone, and Gawker founder Nick Denton decided to have the story removed.

Gawker may continue on under a new owner, but the effects of the lawsuit will certainly influence how media companies view these kinds of stories.

[Photo by Pool/Getty Images]