Wrestler Hulk Hogan is suing Gawker after it posted a sex tape of him and his best friend’s wife. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
Muscled up, mustachioed and prawn-red, the wrestling hero “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan is now at the centre of two controversies that in combination deliver a near-perfect, four-way smackdown of American obsessions with race, sex, money and violence.
On Friday, Hogan – ring name for Terry Gene Bollea – was abruptly fired from World Wrestling Entertainment after tapes recorded in 2007 revealed him ranting about his daughter sleeping with a black man and liberally using the “N” word to embellish his point of view.
Odious, certainly, but Hogan’s diatribe was lifted from court-sealed tapes at the centre of a libel case brought against the gossip website Gawker, itself at the centre of a storm over a series of gay “outings” that have forced its gay, married proprietor to disown his own publication’s editorial practices.
The newly unemployed Hogan, who has since described the outburst – in which he said “I am a racist, to a point, f**king n****rs” – as “offensive” and “unacceptable”, now has further problems.
The recording is from tapes at the centre of a $100m libel case Hogan brought against Gawker after the site posted film of Hogan in sexual congress with the wife of his best friend, DJ Todd Allen Clem, who legally changed his name to Bubba the Love Sponge.
While Love Sponge did not seem to be fazed by this arrangement – he can be heard saying that Hulk and wife Heather can “do their thing” and he will be in his office – it was uncomfortable for Hogan.
Hogan sued Love Sponge for invading his privacy, settled, and then sued Gawker – which has long hinted there was something more to the tape than sex – for posting part of it online.
The case is due to be heard near Hogan’s hometown in Florida in October. Legal analysts say the audio tape could bolster Gawker’s “public interest” defence that it had a right to publish the clip to prove its existence, and because Hogan’s behaviour is newsworthy.
While Gawker has denied it was behind the leak of Hogan’s racist rant, and Hogan’s lawyer has vowed to “bury” Gawker if it that is found to be the case, Gawker Media proprietor Nick Denton, a former Financial Times journalist, is clearly hoping to deflect attention from the company’s current problem.
Ten days ago, the site published a story about a married publishing executive involved with a gay prostitute. The story was soon removed after readers and advertisers objected. Denton issued a lengthy mea culpa, disowning this practice of outing, which has previously been directed at CNN news host Anderson Cooper and NFL star Michael Sam.
Friends say that as a member of New York’s so-called “gay mafia”, Denton had long believed that gay men in positions of power have an obligation to be public about their sexuality. They say Denton, who is now out of the closet and happily married to a man, has changed his views.
Responding to inquiries from the Observer about Gawker’s editorial policies, Denton responded crisply: “Superseded by Hogan.”Others within the fish-bowl of New York’s online media environment point out that whatever Gawker’s policy over celebrity and sexuality, online news sites are facing a crisis as surplus of online content is forcing down CPM – (cost per mille, or thousand impressions) value to media advertisers.
After two senior editors resigned following removal of the “outing” story, Denton told employees that this or similar controversies can cost the company up to $20m in annual revenue.
Media observers point out that internet sites, especially those trading in celebrity and gossip, are faced with a dilemma: to win ad revenue from traditional media and achieve growth, they will have to spend to install editorial-standards safeguards to protect skittish advertisers from being drawn into controversies.
Gawker, they point out, has not been able to grow to the billion-hit size of Buzzfeed, may not be large enough to sustain such additional costs and probably could not afford a $100 million payout to Hollywood Hulk Hogan.