How are they not the free press? I don't get the distinction you're trying to make, because there isn't one. TMZ, Aftonbladet, The Guardian and Bild are also part of the free press as i've always used the word, as opposed to press that isn't free. Like North Korean publications to go to the other extreme end of the spectrum.
I am saying that
one man is not "the free press." You are extrapolating the foolish behavior of one former editor at Gawker with the entire institution. If you had said "A.J. Daulerio did not show enough respect to the court when he answered a question about age limits in a flippant manner," I wouldn't have had a quibble with that. It's true, and he should have taken it more seriously. But you've no evidence that his attitude or behavior is reflective of the press generally. That's what I mean when I say that A.J. Daulerio is not the free press. He is (or was) certainly part of the press, but that does not mean that his sins, whatever they may be, are the sins of the press writ large.
And it doesn't really give me pause, because i think that federal judge was wrong to say it was protected speech, and because their behaviour in court made it obvious they thought they were above the law. A cold shower for the free press was very much needed.
... But if this is about adherence to the law, shouldn't you care about what the law is? This is why I think that this is not truly about the law; this is about your moral or ethical beliefs independent of the law. As you said:
I know they didn't break the law, technically. But i think what they did should have been considered a crime, just like that other dude who got sent to jail for hosting a girlfriend revenge porn site. I very much agree with the jury that wanted the defendants to be sentenced to community service.
It shouldn't become newsworthy just because your victim is famous.
You know that they did not break the law, but you believe that it
should be against the law.
And I think that the argument that it was "newsworthy" in this case was the fact that Hogan was a public figure, had discussed the sexual act multiple times in public, knew he was being filmed, and therefore there was a legal argument that this made it "newsworthy." If he had not given multiple interviews, or had been unaware that he was being filmed, or wasn't a public figure then there wouldn't be an argument that it was newsworthy. I don't think it is tasteful, but it is also not analogous to revenge porn done to a private individual.
If the coverage is of personal affairs without any relationship to the public interest but only our most base, voyeuristic tendencies, I can't really say that that's a bad thing.
Certainly if a paper foregoes reporting on a crime because the person is rich then that could become a problem.
Well, I would agree with the argument that there is a distinction between "the public is interested" and "the public interest", and I would also agree that not having, say, celebrity sex tapes would not really be a bad thing.
So, that's not really my concern.
I was talking about this with another poster on GAF who shall go nameless and is also
boring better-adjusted than I am and doesn't bother arguing with people about things nearly as often. Anyway, he made the point that programs like this algorithm takes something which might be tolerable now, because it is rare, but if they were done algorithmically, in a way that could be done repeatedly and in way that lets you game it to win much more often, it could be extremely destructive.
You also have to remember, of course, that this isn't just a problem for journalism; Legalist is broadly applicable for litigation. It trawls tens of millions of past court cases, not just cases of journalists being sued.
