IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS: “Gawker Documentary Fails to Make Case for Publishing Sex Tape“. Reason’s Glenn Garvin asks why they didn’t interview me for a take on the ethics of webcasting an illegally-made sex tape. Hell, it seems they never they bothered to contact Dan Abrams, the son of First Amendment legend Floyd Abrams; Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor of First Amendment Law at the UC Irvine School of Law; or CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, all of whom did not see the threat to free speech that Gawker and its well-paid publicist touted:

“That there isn’t (or at least, shouldn’t be) any such thing as a legally enforceable right to privacy may be an arguable position—but then it should be argued, openly and plainly, not cloaked in a silly claim that in being punished for publishing an illicitly obtained picture of Hogan’s junk, Gawker is being thwarted in the pursuit of “real journalism, journalism that exposes things that powerful people don’t want known,” as one of the Gawkerites grandiosely claims in Nobody Speak.”

To his credit, at least Garvin cited my legal analysis on the matter appearing at Talking Biz News, a journalism website run by the Business Journalism Department at UNC Chapel Hill.  The video-hagiographers of Gawker couldn’t be bothered. Of course, they had no legal obligation to do so. They also ignored the fact that while blaming billionaire Peter Thiel and his money for their downfall, they — like their cohort cheerleaders in the media mafia — hid the fact that Gawker had their own sugar daddy (a shady Russian, no less) to sponsor their litigation.