HoganвЂ™s legal case has been secretly directed and bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Thiel, a venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal, was the first outside investor in Facebook, and still sits on the board of that web giant. But, as previously detailed on spiked, there was far more going on behind the screen. The prosecution of Gawker ostensibly centred on the websiteвЂ™s publication of excerpts from a sex tape involving celebrity wrestler Hulk Hogan. The wannabe press policeman, Impress, is backed by a cross-section of the Great and the Good, from luvvies and lawyers to multi-millionaire Max Mosley and the left-wing leadership of the National Union of Journalists. At the same time in the UK, we are witnessing the latest steps towards setting up a new state-backed regulator designed to keep unruly tabloids and websites in line. In the US, the Gawker case was pursued by a leading member of what has been described as the New Establishment of hi-tech business moguls вЂ“ Peter Thiel, star player in the New Republicanism, whose вЂproud to be gayвЂ™ speech was cheered by Trump supporters at the party convention. It is a campaign being led on both sides of the Atlantic, not by old-fashioned censors, but by a new alliance of illiberal-liberal prigs who want to вЂethically cleanseвЂ™ the media of whatever is not to their refined taste. GawkerвЂ™s demise is only the headline in a bigger story about a campaign to tame press freedom, online as well as in print, and to sanitise the news media.

But this is more than an outrageous tale of a thin-skinned rich boy.

Gawker liberal