All the News That’s Fit to Print. – motto of The New York Times
The 24-hour news cycle made possible in the late ’80s by the popularity of cable TV is a veritable tortoise in comparison with the speed with which a story can break, develop and be over on the internet. On cable, it was only possible to report the news within hours; feedback still largely progressed at the speed of snail mail (and a few phone calls). But on the internet, a story once broken is within hours linked from many other places; it is then spread and critiqued on social media, and if the response is negative enough the original publisher may try to cram it down the memory hole. From start to finish, the whole process can be completed while a third of internet users are asleep, depending on which time zone the posting site calls home. A particularly striking example started last Thursday, and it was made all the more startling by the fact that it should never have been published in the first place.
At 20:26 PDT Thursday, a rather nasty gossip post went up on Gawker:
David Geithner, brother of ex-Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is currently the chief financial officer of Condé Nast. This past weekend, he’d planned to go to Chicago—where he planned to meet a gay porn star and escort for “2-3 hours” at a cost of $2,500. But…the escort—who does not want to reveal his identity for professional reasons, but whom we will call Ryan—says he bailed on the date with the married (to a woman) father of three because Geithner declined to use his influence to help with a housing dispute…
That’s right, Gawker outed a non-politician who has no record of public statements attacking either gay people or sex workers. And that’s not all:
…The escort then went to Gawker’s Jordan Sargent, who gleefully carried out the blackmail threat by publishing the story and (presumably) outing Geithner…Gawker’s commenters—and nearly all of Twitter—seem to agree that ruining Geithner’s life was excessively, baselessly cruel. Geithner is not a government official; he is not running for office; he does not have a record of hypocrisy on gay issues. The usual excuses one could propose to justify such treatment don’t really apply here. Some Gawker writers are defending the story; others are not. Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a writer for Gawker affiliate Jezebel, wrote: “Stories don’t need an upside. Not everyone has to feel good about the truth. If it’s true, you publish…I’m EXTREMELY suspicious of those who do not want press to have an antagonistic relationship to people in power.” That’s a fair point, but it doesn’t come close to justifying the decision to turn a family’s struggles into front page news. There’s just no compelling public interest here whatsoever…
By Friday morning, “Ryan” had himself been outed as Derek Truitt, whose stage name is Brodie Sinclair:
…regardless of how you feel about outing a public figure who’s attempting to break the law, the bigger and more important question for Gawker might be this: What the fuck were they doing using a batshit insane conspiracy theorist as the sole source and entire catalyst for their story?…Brodie Sinclair, it so happens, is an absolute nut with a Facebook page that might make Alex Jones blush. The even nuttier part? Gawker acknowledges having looked at Sinclair’s Facebook page
, which means they saw all of his insanity and still trusted him with his Geithner story anyway…
And by 18:04 EDT Friday, less than 19 hours after it started the whole debacle, Gawker tried to shove it down the memory hole:
Gawker.com said Friday afternoon it was removing an article about the CFO of Conde Nast allegedly soliciting sex from a gay porn star. The decision came after the news and gossip site drew heavy criticism Friday for revealing life-changing details about a private individual’s life, for no clear social purpose…
…the justification for this story offered by Gawker editor-in-chief Max Read is utterly laughable, and it’s grounded in a premise that is very common when people want to wallow in others’ private lives, yet incredibly toxic…Gawker is simply on the prowl to locate and punish adulterers who are vandalizing the sanctity of their marital vows. It’s just about solemn retribution for sinners…the wife of this CFO is a victim. Read is posing as her chivalrous defender: he only published this article to avenge the wrong done to her. There’s even the strangely sexist formulation to his vow: Gawker, he declares, will always “report on married [] executives of major media companies fucking around on their wives.” What about when the cheating executives are women and the spouse is a man? He doesn’t say. His self-proclaimed mission is to protect this little lady from the harm that has been inflicted on her…But…Max Read has absolutely no idea what this CFO’s wife knows about what her husband does, nor does he have any idea what agreement or arrangement they have governing their marriage. Nor should he know, because it’s none of his business…It’s possible the wife is a victim of his private behavior, but it’s also very possible there are no victims and he did absolutely nothing wrong…
As of this morning, the dust has yet to finish settling; it’ll be very interesting indeed to see the ultimate effect of the fallout.
