TJ Walker breaks down Hulk Hogan's $140 million judgment against Gawker, later settled for $31 million, and how Peter Thiel secretly funded the lawsuits as revenge. The case raises questions about whether rich people can weaponize litigation to silence media outlets.
Questions this video answers
$31 million.
$140 million.
November 6, 2016.
Peter Thiel.
He references Peter Thiel giving a speech endorsing Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican convention.
Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate.
$31 million. That's the final settlement between Hulk Hogan and Gawker, the online publication. Now, for those of you who haven't followed this story, Hulk Hogan, of course, a very famous American wrestler slash entertainer, had many years ago had sex with his good friend's wife. Don't ask me why. The friend apparently videotaped it. The tape got out, it was leaked, and Gawker ran the video for apparently a long time on their website. Even though Hogan asked for it to be taken down, lawsuits ensued. Hulk Hogan was secretly supported by Peter Thiel, the famous, or infamous, depending on your perspective. Venture capitalist, founder of PayPal, numerous other high tech websites, and wildly successful billionaire who himself had a beef with Gawker. Gawker outed him as gay a number of years ago when, although it wasn't a secret and a lot of people, especially in Silicon Valley, knew he didn't like Gawker telling the whole world. And he vowed to seek revenge, and revenge he did. He hired a lawyer and started essentially trolling the country for anyone who might be slighted by Gawker saying, look, you sue, we'll pay for everything. So if you're Hulk Hogan, that sounds like a great deal. Why wouldn't you participate in that? Heads I win, tails you lose. There's no downside for someone who has a beef against Gawker. So enough money, enough effort and circumstances. Hulk Hogan's legal campaign, funded by Peter Thiel, won. They won a 140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, effectively putting it out of business. Gawker had to declare bankruptcy and sell itself to another media organization. And now the final judgment, the final settlement has come about. With Gawker or the remnants or the current owners having to give Hulk Hogan, which I assume almost all of that will go to the lawyer and then perhaps back to Peter Thiel, the 31 million. So what are the real lessons here? I mean, there's two big lessons I can think of. One. One of them, if you're a publication, don't post video of people having sex when they don't want you to do so. Sounds like an obvious lesson. Sounds like a no brainer. But Gawker took the attitude of, hey, this is a celebrity. People find it interesting. This guy has gone on Howard Stern another place and bragging about his sexual pursuits and his endowments. He's the one who's talked about how studly he is. Well, here he is in Action. We didn't record him, but someone sent us the video. It's inherently interesting to a lot of people, so why not? That was their attitude. And it turns out that's not a great attitude to have if you don't want to be sued and get judgments against you. So that's one rule. Probably you could say, well, T.J. i didn't really need to know that. I wasn't planning on doing anything that stupid or tacky or seedy. The second rule is, frankly, what's a lot is a lot more interesting. As much as it's easy for me and you and a lot of people to say, aren't these people at Gawker nasty? Didn't they get what's coming to them? Running videos of people, even if they're celebrities, having sex when they didn't know they were being taped as nasty, outing gay people against their will is a nasty thing to do. So you know what Gawker had, what's coming to him. If this puts the slime urges out a bit, good for them. That's certainly one attitude, and it's an easy attitude to have. But the second big lesson here, though, unfortunately, is that anyone who's worried about corporate media and the powerful and wealthy, controlling media and people who worry about conspiracies, well, now you've really got something to worry about. Peter Thiel has introduced a new dynamic. By the way, if you're thinking that name, Peter Thiel sounds awfully familiar, it's because he gave a speech endorsing Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican convention. And he's the most prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur investor to support Donald Trump. He's also pretty much the only one out there supporting Donald Trump. But the big lesson here is, wow, corporate power and billionaires especially now, have a way of putting media organizations out of business. And that's got to be scary. Even if you hate Gawker, even if you think what they did was disgusting, it opens up a whole new avenue of influence by the wealthy and the powerful. Because if you are, well, let's just say you are. I won't mention any name, but let's say you're a couple of brothers and you own a tremendous number of oil and energy companies, and an organization not quite as powerful and as wealthy as the Wall Street Journal writes negative stories about you, and they all happen to be true. So you can't sue for libel, slander, or gross negligence or anything like that, but you just hate the media outlet. What you can now do is go after every single person who's ever criticized that media outlet, anyone who ever claims they were harmed by something factually incorrect, you can go to them and say, hey, let's all sue and you won't have to pay a thing. You're a mom and pop restaurant. They wrote a nasty review and you went out of business next month. Okay, let's sue them and say they destroyed your business and it won't cost you a thing. Well, if I'm an unemployed former restaurateur, what do I have to lose? And so here's the problem. Even if every one of those lawsuits is frivolous and goes nowhere, you could bleed the media outlet dry. You could just tie them up in courts for so long, they just can't continue to fight it. Now, you could say that's always been the case with the ability to sue. But this is a new tactic that Peter Thiel has tried. It's not just frivolous lawsuits, but the idea that you put out a blanket and you fund any lawsuit that appears to have some credibility just because you have a vendetta against the organization really skews the balance of power against the media outlet in favor of deep pockets. If you are a billionaire or you're incredibly rich, you may think, well, that's a great thing. If you're not a billionaire, if you're not wildly wealthy and you want the most free flow of information, facts about what's going on in the world, it's got to be terrifying. It's got to be scary to you. So I think it's a horrible development. What do you think? I know it's easy just to say, oh, Gawker had what it's coming. But if you take a step back and look at the broader implications, it's not pretty. What do you think? Send me a comment on Twitter. You can reach me at TJ Walker. Go to my Facebook page. TJ Walker Interactive is my main page there. You go to my brand new website for this podcast, speakingwithtjwalker.com. post a comment there. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for spending a little weekend time with me today. As always, the program is brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. Before you give your next speech or media interview, why not rehearse? Why not get better? Why not get refined? You can do it from the comfort of your own home or office. With our online training schools, you can get a free sample. All you have to do is click on the link below in the show notes or go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and sign up for the free courses today. Thanks. See you tomorrow.
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