From one of Gawker.com’s last posts:
Gawker.com is out of business because one wealthy person maliciously set out to destroy it, spending millions of dollars in secret, and succeeded. That is the only reason.
The strange and embarrassing thing about being the target of a conspiracy, an actual conspiracy, is that it undermines one’s own understanding of the world. It is true that Gawker was always a publication that took risks. It had bad manners and sometimes bad judgment. Occasionally, it published things that it would regret—just as, for instance, the New York Times has published things that it regrets.
But every publication gives itself room to make mistakes, and is prepared to absorb the damage when it does make a mistake. The New York Post was so eager for a scoop on the Boston Marathon bombing that it put a photo of two innocent men on its front page, after law enforcement had already declared that they were not suspects. The Post was denounced, as it deserved to be, for callously crossing the line, and it ended up settling a defamation lawsuit.
Gawker always said it was in the business of publishing true stories. Here is one last true story: You live in a country where a billionaire can put a publication out of business. A billionaire can pick off an individual writer and leave that person penniless and without legal protection.
If you want to write stories that might anger a billionaire, you need to work for another billionaire yourself, or for a billion-dollar corporation. The law will not protect you. There is no freedom in this world but power and money.
This was an orchestrated take-down by the megalomaniac Thiel one of the richest and most despicable homo-con gay men in America and bodes very poorly for free journalism. To place immediate holds on funds the way the court did and driving Gawker into bankruptcy, when the total will likely be substantially reduced on appeal – all but ensured that whoever had the most money and connections would win.
This was nothing short than an attack of freedom of the press and do not think otherwise.
Goodbye Gawker. We loved you and at times we hated you but you did have the right to exist.
And Peter Thiel you sir are a disgrace to the gay community and should be run out of town on a rail and tarred and feathered. BITCH.
