Ep 174 Peter Thiel's Ultimate Crisis Communications Weapon June 22, 2016

It's the ultimate weapon in the crisis communications war between the media and those they cover.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, I've been around a long time. I thought I'd seen it all. But this is a new wrinkle in ways of dealing battle with the media. I've seen organizations put out a memo to all their employees. You cannot speak to a member of this particular media outlet because they didn't like the coverage. Certainly people have sued before for libel, slander. Certainly you've seen boycotts organized if a political figure especially or certain business interest feels like a media outlet has been unfair. But this is a new one. This came out in the spring of 2016 where there was a legal case involving Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler who sued the media outlet Gawker. Gawker famously published a video of Hulk Hogan having sex with his then best friend's wife. Don't ask, let's not get into the details there. But Hulk Hogan sued and one of significant judgment of more than $100 million. It's on appeal at this moment. Who knows how much he'll eventually get. But as the trial continued, the appeals process continued, some very odd things emerged. The trial attorneys representing Hulk Hogan specifically disallowed going after aspects of the case that the insurance company for Gawker would have to pay for. Now this struck a lot of people as odd because typically plaintiff lawyers are trying to get the the most money for their clients and for themselves. And insurance companies typically have much deeper pockets than an online media company or any other company. So you typically are most interested in suing where there's an insurance company involved. So that struck a lot of people as quite odd. And rumors started circulating that other people were behind this. And is it now? Turns out there was the famed investor, Peter Thiel, one of the co founders of PayPal. He's a wildly successful investor billionaire. He and his colleagues have been involved with almost every wildly successful startup you can think of. Facebook, you name it. This guy has more money than kings and rulers and he can do what he wants. Well, here's what happened about 10 years ago. Back in 2007, one of Gawker's publications, Valleywag, which covered people out in Silicon Valley, had an article. Here was the headline, Peter Thiel is totally gay people. They essentially outed Peter Thiel. He didn't like it. And if you're like most people, you don't like his story. And it's True. And he sends confirmed and he sends an out gay man. So I'm not adding any soul to the wound here. So what most people do is cancel their subscription, complain, write a letter to the editor, maybe write or underwrite a lawsuit if things are factually incorrect. In that case, it wasn't. It was just considered a mean spirited and no public purpose for doing that. So here's what he did. He hired a whole bunch of lawyers, he put together a legal team, funded it with $10 million and said go around sniffing anyone you find who has any complaints with this magazine that's now gone defunct. But the parent company, Gawker, we're going to represent them and take it all the way. They're not going to have to pay anything. Now, apparently this is all completely legal, so no one is alleging that Peter Thiel has committed any crimes here. But it is, I think, an historic attempt at, you could argue it's a form of crisis communications. It's certainly a form of trying to control the media. Because if Peter Thiel gets his wishes, he will ultimately bankrupt Gawker and it will be destroyed. It will be put on the auction block for its chairs and computers and there presumably will be nothing left of value, maybe their website. Now, here's what's tricky about this issue. The natural sympathies, I think, from a lot of people is to side with Peter Thiel. And in this case I'm certainly sympathetic. Here's a guy who, number one, was not a politician running for office. And yeah, he's involved in public policy issues, but he's not like someone running on a platform of let's prosecute gay people and put gay people in prison and end AIDS funding. It's not like he was doing that, being a big hypocrite and being outed. He was known as an investor and an entrepreneur, an education reform advocate. And this publication comes along and outs him, which most fair minded people would say is a pretty nasty thing to do. Next you have the issue at hand of Terry Bola, the real name of Hulk Hogan, who had a video that he thought was, he didn't even know was being made. Apparently, and for no reason at all, just utter salaciousness. Gawker runs the video of this person having sex with his friend's wife, even after he asked, demanded, filed suit to have them pull it down. They didn't do it. So the natural sympathy is to say, well, Gawker is clearly sleazy, nasty organization and they deserve everything coming to them. And there's definitely A part of me that sides with that. However, and there is a big however, this could cause real problems for the media, at least in the United States. More on that in a moment.

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So the immediate application of this and the fear a lot of people have and why it could be a problem is also, frankly, a tactic that really rich people and rich corporations may be following in the future. And that is, if a news organization comes to you and they're writing a story that is wildly negative, even if it's true, you can now say to this organization, okay, we are going to put together a legal defense fund. And anyone who ever has any beef with you, anyone who ever alleges you made a factual error, we're going to fund a lawsuit on their behalf. So they're not going to have to spend a penny, and maybe half of them are judged frivolous, but you're going to have to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars defending yourself. Now, a lot of media organizations, especially local newspapers these days that are going out of business already because they've lost all their advertising to Craigslist. I don't know how they're going to deal with that, frankly, because it is going to be severely inhibiting. It is going to make publishers and journalists think, okay, we know we have the facts on this polluter or this criminal, but he's so rich or she's so rich that if they now fund 100 lawsuits from all of our enemies, we simply cannot survive the legal cost and we are going to go out of business. The case of Caulker the amount of money they've had to spend is astronomical. It certainly has diminished their attractiveness. If they were to go public or to be acquired by, I don't know what media company would want to acquire a company that has this sort of death notice hanging over it, a wildly chilling effect. But I have to be fair here. I have to be honest and recognize that, in fact, I do think this is going to be a tactic of media manipulation, media control, a form of crisis communications. If you've been hit with some scandal, a way of fighting back with the media, I have profoundly mixed feelings about it. I think it could be wildly destructive to a free press, a fair press and an open press, and give even more power to billionaires. And, hey, some of my best friends are billionaires. I hope to be a billionaire. I'm not bashing the wealthy, but let's be honest, they already get to do an awful lot. If now there's a sense that they can do anything and media outlets are going to be afraid to cover them at all because of this fear of lawsuit, multiple lawsuits grinding them down, it really will change the face of democracy and capitalism. Food for thought. I'm TJ Walker. I'd love to hear your opinion on Even if you don't have a question, I'd love to hear your opinion. Post your comments if you're watching this on YouTube, you can also post comments on our Facebook page, LinkedIn. Wherever you are seeing or hearing this program. Thanks as always. May all of your presentations in life be a success. And I hope they don't generate lawsuits either.

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