Greg's Corner

Victory for Journalism: Peter Thiel agrees not to buy Gawker

Back in January, billionaire venture capitalist, and possible real life super villain, Peter Thiel made it known that he had plans to bid for Gawker’s remaining asset, that being the website itself. As you may recall, Thiel bankrolled the lawsuit against Gawker filed by former pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan, the same lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker. Most of Gawker’s assets were sold to television network Univision, however, the website itself was not part of that sale. Previously, we speculated that Thiel maybe trying to buy the website in order to erase Gawker’s negative coverage of him and for him to have the ability to sue anyone who may try to republish the Gawker articles. Now, Thiel has reached a legal agreement where he has promised not to buy the now defunct but still online website.

The administrator of Gawker’s estate sought to block Thiel from bidding in the website claiming that “the auction could have a “chilling effect” on bidding and that the auction would “elicit greater interest and higher bids” without Thiel’s participation.” Thiel agreed not to bid on Gawker after the Gawker estate promised not to further investigate Thiel in order to bring legal action against Thiel for secretly funding several lawsuits against Gawker.

This is a big deal because it shows that not all media outlets can be bought by billionaires looking to silence any criticism against them. While Gawker may not have been the quintessential bastion of journalism, without curtailing actions against them like Thiel had allegedly planned where would it have stopped? What if it led to someone buying an outlet like the New York Times in order to quash any criticism against them? At that point we may have witnessed the death of objective journalism.