Gawker President Explains Why They Had To Post The Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Videos
Yesterday, Fortune.com published an article by Jeff John Roberts profiling Heather Dietrick, the president and general counsel of Gawker. As you'd expect, much of the article dealt with Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against them for publishing snippets of a sex video that was shot without his consent on a home security system. There's also a video of Dietrick going over the Hogan case.
As has become par for the course, she discussed Gawker's defense in the lawsuit.
"It's a story I hold my head high in fighting," she explained. "We told a real story that cleared a lot up about what was out there. Hogan himself was out there talking in color detail about his sex life again and again and his interaction with women in the bedroom again and again."
Dietrick believes it's Gawker's job to tell celebrity stories the way that celebrities don't want them told, instead doing it the way the media would prefer to do it and how they believe the public wants to read it. It's about the truth, not kowtowing to anyone. Of course, that doesn't necessarily explain why they absolutely had to publish actual clips from the video.
For what may be the first time, Dietrick gave the specific reasoning for why they had to publish clips: "Frankly, to use none of the video, I think would have just contributed to the rumors already out there."
When the video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine was rumored to exist, a Gawker reporter went to Toronto and saw it, but couldn't get it. As a result, when he wrote the story, Ford denied it since the video wasn't out. That was apparently the idea here: If they didn't include any of the video, Hogan could've claimed it was all made up. She didn't explain why they decided not to censor it, though.
The whole article is well worth reading, and includes Dietrick's thoughts on the recent controversy over a Gawker writer outing a publishing executive for no real reason. You can check it out by clicking here.
Source: Fortune