Note to gossip columnist and bloggers : lessons from the Hulk Hogan sex tape case

Earlier this week, super-star wrestling icon, Hulk Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, was awarded a record $140 million payout in the privacy lawsuit against online gossip media site Gawker. Jurors say they are convinced they made the right decision to award the record damages against Gawker for a breach of Hogan’s right to privacy, by airing a sex tape of Hogan and his best friend’s wife, hoping it will serve as a deterrent to other media companies.

The former professional wrestler was featured in a sexually explicit video where he is shown in a sexual encounter with Heather Clem, the wife of radio personality Bubba the love sponge Clem. Clips of the video were widely circulated online throughout 2012, which lead Bollea to file lawsuits against both the Clems and Gawker Media for violating his privacy. The Jurors had said that the intimate nature of the conversations during the footage had convinced them that Hogan was not

aware he was being filmed and even if he was aware, had not consented to the tape being published. Worse still, the publisher, Nick Denton who is the owner of Gawker showed no remorse during the trial or the reading of the verdict even though the award could render him bankrupt. The jurors held that it is an invasion of privacy to make publicly available a tape of a person having sex without that person’s consent and no right to freedom of expression or the press could justify this.

Even as Gawker’s publication of a Hulk Hogan sex tape raises legal questions and issues of public opinion and morals, it should serve as a reminder and a note of warning to gossip blogs and columns seeking to drive traffic to their blogs by rushing to post unconfirmed news or scandalous stories which do not have the consent of the owners and which violate owner’s privacy. Nigeria may not have all of the privacy laws right now but with the spate of development on the internet, it is no surprise that very soon we would see similar law suits against careless bloggers and columnists. To avoid having such a huge monetary award hanging over your neck in addition to the possibility of going under, make sure you heed the classic clarion call, ‘Before you publish, think!’