Tampa Radio: Gawker's Standards Set A Low Bar

Hulk Hogan

As his videotaped deposition played for jurors Wednesday morning, former Gawker editor-in-chief Albert James "A.J." Daulerio was asked where he drew the line when it came to publishing celebrity sex tapes.

Under his watch, the New York-based website had posted online topless photographs of Kate Middleton, nude pictures of former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and a brief video showing wrestler Hulk Hogan having sex with his best friend's wife.

Resisting the notion that all celebrity sex tapes are inherently newsworthy, Daulerio said he wouldn't publish a video of a child, according to The Tampa Bay Times.

"Under what age?" asked an attorney for Hogan, a.k.a. Terry Bollea, who is suing Gawker and Daulerio for $100 million.

AJ Daulerio

"Four," Daulerio said.

Attorney: "No 4-year-old sex tapes, okay."

Whether he was being flippant or serious, Daulerio's response was a gift for Bollea's attorneys, who are seeking to convince a jury that the celebrity wrestler's privacy was violated by journalists who cared only about increasing their page news. On Wednesday, they put Gawker's editorial ethics on trial, relying on the website editors' own words to show how far they had strayed from industry standards established by print publications.

Calling those ethical guidelines "irrelevant, even damaging, in the Internet era," Gawker founder and president Nick Denton said his site is "less sensitive to sensitivity than traditional newspapers."

Nick Denton

Asked if he had ever considered that the video might embarrass Bollea, he replied: "My job is to disseminate information. It's up to others to determine the boundaries of accepted social journalistic and legal norms."

Attorneys for Bollea are hopeful a jury will reset that line, drawing it firmly outside of Gawker's actions and creating a new standard for freedom of speech in an age of viral videos and celebrity sex tapes.

Gawker's attorneys maintain that Bollea essentially forfeited his right to privacy by talking about his sex life in graphic detail on almost every radio or TV show that would have him. Posting the video was as justifiable as publishing a written commentary on his performance, they say, particularly because at least one other website had already posted still photographs taken from the video.