Thiel’s clash with media a blow to ‘sleaze journalism’

The media can be a powerful servant of the common good. It also has tremendous power to inflict pain on individuals.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was in the news last week.

A New Zealand resident since 2006, he became a citizen in 2011.

Further information about this change in status was released last week, which has seen the media and Opposition raising questions about why he was granted citizenship.

By coincidence, streaming service Netflix has also released Nobody Speak, a documentary about events involving Thiel.

The movie concerns a lawsuit between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media, which published a sex tape that the former wrestler says was made without his consent.

A jury found Gawker had unreasonably invaded Hogan’s privacy and awarded him more than US$140 million in damages.

This judgment was the end of Gawker, which filed for bankruptcy and is now defunct.

Following the trial, it emerged that Thiel bankrolled Hogan’s case. With costs exceeding US$10M, Hogan could not have sustained the case on his own.

As Thiel himself said: ‘‘If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system.’’

Payback may have been a motivating factor. In 2007, a Gawker Media property publicly outed Thiel as a homosexual. Stung by the exposure, he seems to have set his mind on fighting back.

Few journalists see much merit in all this. Nobody Speak certainly wasn’t shy about taking sides.

In the film, Thiel’s involvement is framed as an ominous development as part of a larger war against news.

I am not so sure. There’s nothing new about insanely wealthy people using litigation to make a point. In fact, it’s one of the real positives about having them around and always has been.

Before the English civil war, for example, Charles I did his best to skirt Parliament and extract taxes through dubious means.

One person who resisted this was John Hampden, a landowner and MP. Because of his vast wealth, he had the means to challenge the Crown beyond that of an ordinary person.

Hampden used the means available to him to challenge a tax known as ‘‘Ship Money’’ in the courts.

We do not know how much he spent doing this, but it was many, many times the cost of the twenty shillings he had been assessed.

He lost his case, but only narrowly. The case inspired others to challenge the tax and this was one of the reasons the King had to summon the ‘‘Long Parliament’’ – a milestone on the road to constitutional democracy.

Is Peter Thiel a modern-day John Hampden?

Probably not. But the assistance he gave Hogan may help to deter sleaze journalism in the future.

I have been writing columns for almost six years now.

Freedom of speech has been a theme of them.

I do not think I have come out in favour of censorship once. But that doesn’t mean there are no lines that should not be crossed.

As Nobody Speak built up to a rah-rah finale extolling journalism, something was missing.

It was something that the film never really dealt with properly.

That is that, when it came down to it, Gawker was undone by its own grossness.

The help Thiel gave Hogan would have come to nothing if Gawker were not guilty of a shameful abuse of platform. Gawker had media rabies. While its editor points out the good stories it was involved in, overt cruelty was its signature trait. It was a site built around the profitability of nastiness.

During the proceedings, another Gawker editor said that his personal line for celebrity sextape publication would be if it involved a child.

Asked to explain further, he ventured that the line be drawn at 4 years old and younger. That editor now says he was joking, but it’s hard to imagine a sentiment more emblematic of gutter reporting.

New Zealanders can avail themselves of a privacy point of law similar to the one used by Hogan.

The Court of Appeal determined this over a decade ago in a case brought by Mike Hosking (of all people).

This is an appropriate check on the power of the press. The media can be a powerful servant of the common good. It also has tremendous power to inflict pain on individuals.

Anybody who has been improperly victimised by the press gone rogue will tell you it is a hellish experience.

The vindication of a Press Council ruling made after the damage is done is a pretty small comfort. None of this says anything about the decision to grant Thiel citizenship, of course.

That happened years before all this came to pass. But it’s not clear the demise of Gawker should be a black mark against his name either.