Should he be able to obtain redress in the courts? Mightn’t freedom of speech argue against that? Perhaps he will be able to sue for defamation, but this is difficult in the US, and I expect it will be impossible if the allegations are, indeed, true. We might wonder what redress someone should have when treated in this way. Still, these sorts of situations can test our understanding of freedom of speech, and perhaps also challenge our commitment to it. To me, it’s gratifying that so many voices are being raised in that person’s defence and against Gawker’s actions. I can’t, however, say much in defence of Gawker, particularly when it is Gawker and its author that have used a very large public platform to single out and smear a specific private individual. In those many cases, I ask for a degree of charity, sensitivity, and complexity of interpretation sufficient to give writers, speakers, artists - and ordinary people - their due. In many cases, I’ll defend individual speakers and artistic creators, and their books and movies, and the full range of cultural productions that can have meanings and influence our thoughts. I’m very suspicious of government censorship, and I strongly support the rights of artists, intellectuals, and ordinary people to express themselves frankly and fearlessly.Įven where government censorship is not involved, I worry when I see ideas, opinions, and cultural productions (such as literary and artistic works) interpreted unfairly or censoriously. I am a free speech advocate, a somewhat prominent one. The post appears to be pure clickbait, displaying a callous, if not outright malicious, attitude to an individual and his family. Even if there could be some circumstances in which such a post might be justified - which I doubt - this is remote from them. He is not a morals campaigner, or an anti-gay campaigner, or a person who could justly be accused of public hypocrisy if the allegations turned out to be true. The man concerned is a senior executive in a large company, but he is not a politician or in any other sense a public figure. Still, the damage has been done: there is little we can do ameliorate it, since the post has already been seen by a vast online audience.Īs Yezmin Villarreal accurately describes the Gawker post ( writing at ), it alleges that a named finance executive “tried to hire a gay porn star for sex at a cost of $2,500.” Villareal adds, again accurately, “The story contains screenshots of text messages and photos that allegedly identify the man, who is married to a woman and has children.” That will mean one less direct link between his name and Gawker’s allegations. Though it will have little effect, I likewise won’t name the smeared person. Given the way this news story has gone viral, I cannot protect the name of the individual accused of hiring a gay prostitute, but I can at least do something to minimise adding clicks on Gawker’s site. The link I’ve provided above is not to Gawker’s site, but to an archived copy of the particular post. It brought this on itself by posting a prurient and cruel story about the alleged sexual conduct of a finance executive employed by rival media company Condé Nast. Over the past 24 hours, Gawker, the controversial gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, has earned some extraordinary and entirely justified opprobrium.
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