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The trial between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media pitted privacy rights against freedom of the press, and raised important questions about how big money can silence media. This film is an examination of the perils and duties of the free press in an age of inequality.
Director: Brian Knappenberger
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“Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed is Not Safe For Work but Watch it Anyway.”
Read the reportage at Library of Congress Web Archives Collection
“‘It basically stands for the narrow proposition that you should not publish a sex tape,’ Mr. Thiel says. ‘I think that’s an insult to journalists to suggest that’s journalism now. Transparency is good, but at some point it can go in this very toxic direction.'”
Read the article from Maureen Dowd on The New York Times.
Read the removed article, archived on Wayback Machine.
“…there are resonances between Hogan’s jury verdict against Gawker.com and Trump’s victory over liberal media opposition. Both Gawker.com and the Clinton campaign were undone by hyperbolic celebrities — Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump — whose reputations were immune to media criticism.”
Read more on Nick Denton’s Blog.
“World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. has cut ties with the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, reportedly due to sealed transcripts quoted by the National Enquirer and Radar on Friday morning in which Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) refers to black people as ‘fucking niggers’ and admits that ‘I am a racist, to a point.’ ”
Read more on Gawker.
Another film from the director Brian Knappenberger, focusing on the shifting landscape of digital activism.
“Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era.”
Read the full statement by Nick Denton on Gawker.
“The apparent success of an aggrieved billionaire in destroying the media company over a personal slight sets a disturbing precedent — paving the way for a future in which ‘comic-book villain’ billionaires can strike down unwelcome coverage with impunity.”
Read the article from Park MacDougal on New York Magazine.
“While a billionaire secretly funding a lawsuit to take down a news outlet may be a new way of using money to influence the media business, billionaires have long exerted influence on the news simply by owning U.S. media outlets.”
Read the article from Kate Vinton on Forbes.
"Nobody Speak will show just how valuable free press is as well as how disturbing it is that this institution is under attack."
Kayla Cobb, Decider
"... the cast of characters is the stuff documentarians dream of."
Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
"A call to arms, a reminder that, after all, a free press is ‘part of the bedrock of democracy.’ It's an upsetting movie. But it's an increasingly necessary one."
Jason Bailey, Flavorwire
"A troubling foreshadowing of things to come if journalists are threatened, sidelined or attacked by powerful institutions and people more concerned with their own interests than what's best for the country or communities."
Jeffrey Fleishman , Los Angeles Times
