When Billionaires Rule | Jacobin
The demise of Gawker shows that the greatest impediment to media democracy isn’t the state—it’s the rich & powerful.
"Of course, Gawker tended toward sensationalistic
and tawdry coverage. But it was also capable of hard-hitting reporting,
and its irreverence allowed it to offer sorely needed scrutiny of the
powerful and famous. It inhabited a niche where at least some degree of
independent journalism was possible (see, for instance, its exposure of
the David Petraeus scandal).
"Then along came Peter Thiel. A Silicon Valley libertarian billionaire,
Thiel sought vengeance for an earlier piece in Gawker about his
sexuality. He bankrolled a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, forcing the outlet
into bankruptcy and single-handedly blowing the Gawker model out of the
water. As former Gawker features editor Tom Scocca succinctly put it,
the news site folded simply because 'one wealthy person maliciously set
out to destroy it, spending millions of dollars in secret' — making
clear, Scocca concluded, that there’s 'no freedom in this world but
power and money.'"
