Univision executives delete 6 Gawker Media posts
Executives at Univision, the company that bought the beleaguered Gawker Media, voted on Friday to delete six contentious posts from the company's network of websites, Gawker Media site Gizmodo reported.
The six posts are all involved in ongoing litigation. Three of the posts are from the sports site Deadspin, two are from Gizmodo and one is from the women's site Jezebel.
The company voted not to delete one other post proposed for elimination.
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“I communicated to Felipe and Jay in the strongest terms that deleting these posts is a mistake and that disappearing true posts about public figures simply because they have been targeted by a lawyer who conspired with a vindictive billionaire to destroy this company is an affront to the very editorial ethos that has made us successful enough to be worth acquiring," Gawker Media Executive Editor John Cook, who voted against the decision, wrote in a staff memo.
Univision bid for Gawker Media in an auction after the media company was forced to declare bankruptcy. The bankruptcy followed a $140 million judgment in a lawsuit brought by the former wrestler Hulk Hogan. Hogan was funded by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who holds a longstanding grudge against Gawker.
Univision paid $135 million for Gawker Media, and shuttered the company's flagship site, Gawker.com.
The vote to remove six posts from Gawker Media's sites took place hours before Univision's acquisition of the company closed, Gizmodo reported.
The posts reported on the former Major League Baseball pitcher Mitch Williams, conservative blogger Chuck Johnson, a rape case and "the story of the man who pretended to invent email," Gizmodo said.
As of Saturday afternoon, the posts were scrapped from the sites, replaced with this text:
Gawker Media employees on Twitter strongly objected to the decision. As Gizmodo noted, Gawker has been a strong critic of other sites for bowing to outside pressure and deleting posts.
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Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.
