{"id":264649,"date":"2016-11-03T07:49:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T07:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=264649"},"modified":"2016-11-03T07:49:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T07:49:30","slug":"gawker-settles-hulk-hogan-privacy-case-for-31m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=264649","title":{"rendered":"Gawker settles Hulk Hogan privacy case for $31m"},"content":{"rendered":"

The defunct US news website Gawker has settled a lawsuit won by retired US professional wrestler Hulk Hogan for $31m (\u00a325m).<\/p>\n

The privacy case forced Gawker to declare bankruptcy earlier this year, after a jury awarded Mr Hogan $140m over a leaked sex tape.<\/p>\n

Mr Hogan’s legal bill was paid by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who said he wanted to curb Gawker’s “bullying”.<\/p>\n

Gawker shut down in August following the judgement.<\/p>\n

The website, launched in the early 2000s, was known for its acerbic tone and aggressive coverage of celebrities.<\/p>\n

The case involved a video posted by Gawker in 2012 after Mr Hogan was secretly recorded having sex with his friend’s wife.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Gawker
Gawker founder Nick Denton said the final settlement was ‘a hard peace’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

The settlement was announced on Wednesday in a blog post by Gawker founder Nick Denton, who called the conclusion of the case “a hard peace”.<\/p>\n

He said the company and staff were confident the appeals process would reduce the judgement against Gawker, but that “all-out legal war would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight.”<\/p>\n

Mr Denton also said that as part of the settlement, three “true stories\u200a” would be “removed from the web”.<\/p>\n

Press freedom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr Thiel co-founded PayPal and was an early stakeholder in Facebook.<\/p>\n

In a New York Times article in August explaining why he had funded the case, he said his own privacy had been violated when Gawker outed him as a gay man in 2007.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Peter
Peter Thiel funded a legal battle against Gawker Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n
<\/figure>\n

Campaign group Reporters without Borders, however, criticised Mr Thiel’s “secret” involvement in the case, calling it a “serious threat” to press freedom.<\/p>\n

As part of the settlement deal, two other cases against Gawker journalists were also dropped, Mr Denton said in his blog post.<\/p>\n

He said it was “a settlement that allows us all to move on, and focus on activities more productive than endless litigation.”<\/p>\n

Mr Denton, who was also held liable along with the journalist who wrote the article, filed for personal bankruptcy following the $140m judgement.<\/p>\n

Gawker media also filed for bankruptcy, and shuttered the long-running blog Gawker.com in August.<\/p>\n

Its sister sites on the media network – including popular special interest sites Deadspin, Polygon and Jezebel – were acquired by Univision, and continue to operate.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The defunct US news website Gawker has settled a lawsuit won by retired US professional wrestler Hulk Hogan for $31m (\u00a325m). The privacy case forced Gawker to declare bankruptcy earlier this year, after a jury awarded Mr Hogan $140m over a leaked sex tape. Mr Hogan’s legal bill was paid by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":264650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[13328,3],"class_list":["post-264649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-showbiz","tag-gawker","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}