hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

no proof of this but i truly doubt the escort would have given gawker the scoop without some assurance of collusion unless he's just plain naive, which seems unlikely given the circumstances. gawker spoiled the blackmail scheme by running the story and ultimately failed to protect the escort's identity. nobody wins.

More or less the same as what they did with the Rob Ford video. Though the blackmailers in that case ended up dead iirc.

what are the five elements of blackmail

Except for all of us who get to feel self-righteous about what a cesspool Gawker is. We're the winners.

there is imo a very good chance the blackmailer was quite naive imo, not a professional criminal and so forth

xps Gawker and the escort were in contact with Geithner simultaneously, prior to publication. The crime was very much ongoing, not a completed, failed attempt. Read the accessory statute again. Why is this so difficult?

all dude wanted was a professional dicking down in his hotel room, he really didn't deserve this. i mean, we've all been there, haven't we?

― gwyneth anger (patron sailor), Friday, July 17, 2015 3:48 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

needs proper recognition

― Upright Mammal (mh), Friday, July 17, 2015 9:08 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf the CFO might have wanted to do the dicking down himself, we don't know top/bottom/etc..

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, July 17, 2015 9:10 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most (not all) of the scenes the scort has filmed are of him topping, i checked my journalistic sources i.e. tube sites

It's hard to remember the order of the steps of blackmail. I'm sure he'll get it right some day.

literally u cannot investigate an ongoing crime w/o being an accessory i do not think this is true

it's amazing what you dorks are taking away from all this and arguing about smh.

ur a dork

To be totally clear, I actually don't think this *was* extortion, but for a different reason: after this case courts take a much narrower view of what constitutes the "property" an extortionist has to be trying to obtain, and Geithner's influence wouldn't cut it. But New York has a misdemeanor crime of coercion that's otherwise identical except for the property requirement.

Remember when jezebel published the amazon wish list of that disgraced former sony executive?

Treeship
Posted: July 17, 2015 at 3:27:54 PM
It's hard to remember the order of the steps of blackmail. I'm sure he'll get it right some day.

ppl fuck up in high stress situations all the time hard to believe i know

xps You can investigate - but if your investigation entails "intentionally aiding" your source, and you know that what the source is doing is criminal ("acting with the mental culpability required for the commission thereof"), you, too, are criminally liable! That's just what the law is. You probably won't be prosecuted. It is possible to make this observation without necessarily implying that all brave investigative journalists like J0rdan deserve to do time.

I am interested in the intellectual or cultural rationale that an openly gay writer and a website's openly gay owner have for outing closeted gay men, famous or not, like if either of them wrote at length and in earnest on the subject I'd be curious to read it. Is this like a really fringe perspective or a common guilty pleasure thing in gay culture in this day and age, dragging people out of the closet? Have their been ilx discussions where people have hashed out their feelings on this? The Anderson Cooper/Shep Smith stuff seemed to kind of coyly play off "oh everyone knows already, we're just saying it," this is something pretty different even setting aside the debate of whether this guy is even a public figure.

he was obvs not intentionally aiding him!

I hope someone got fired for that "Deborah, the patriarch" blunder.

This piece was extensively edited

like none of his actions in any way even imply it!

i just thought it was a patriarch named deborah, i mean why not

He didn’t receive a response until after I contacted Geithner for a statement, at which point Geithner texted Ryan and asked him to call immediately.

Later, Ryan tells me, Geithner promised him that if he could get Gawker to kill the story, Geithner would bring his HUD complaint to President Obama.

u seem to be confusing jordan with the other two guys

J0rdan could have told the guy that gawker wouldn't go to press with this so he should just drop it.

No other tabloid would give a shit about the cfo of conde nast

If j0rdan said that, the dude loses his leverage

the escort tried to use the story for leverage but jordan was not attempting to help him

I am interested in the intellectual or cultural rationale that an openly gay writer and a website's openly gay owner have for outing closeted gay men, famous or not, like if either of them wrote at length and in earnest on the subject I'd be curious to read it. Is this like a really fringe perspective or a common guilty pleasure thing in gay culture in this day and age, dragging people out of the closet? Have their been ilx discussions where people have hashed out their feelings on this? The Anderson Cooper/Shep Smith stuff seemed to kind of coyly play off "oh everyone knows already, we're just saying it," this is something pretty different even setting aside the debate of whether this guy is even a public figure.

― some dude, Friday, July 17, 2015 9:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've seen gay men argue that outing people is a necessary political act. trash opinion.

i don't get the impression this was motivated by any kind of radical philosophy other than corporate competition, which is one of the things that is sticking with me w/r/t its grimness, the other being newsroom culture - like, day-to-day quotidian office life - in 2015

xp I don't know why you think that's so obvious from the way the story is written that you don't need to back it up at greater length! Maybe you're privy to inside info here, I don't know.

some dude, i am 100% sure that they were completely conscience of the fact that this story was being attributed to an openly gay writer to soften the blow of outing the man.

to quote gawker: ...the post, which was written by staff writer Jordan Sargent and edited by several other Gawker staffers

it takes an army, y'all.

Wasn't johnjcook the guy who wrote all the Lena Dunham articles?

1 theres nothing there that isnt totally normal investigation, like he got a tip and made a phone call 2 he then used the info to totally undermine the guys blackmail attempt

how did he undermine it exactly

i actually wouldnt be surprised if the worst is true, and that jordan expressed interest up front, as soon as he got the tip, but the guy didnt give gawker the evidence (texts etc) until after geithner declined to give in to his demand. The story implies it didn't happen like that but it would make the most sense

he then used the info to totally undermine the guys blackmail attempt

Did he? Now the whole story is public when, 24 hours ago, it wasn't. I'd say that the extorter not reaping the benefits of the extortion is secondary.

http://politburo.gawker.com/hi-i-am-a-cute-and-very-harmless-kittycat-1718635904
― some dude, Friday, July 17, 2015 9:16 PM (21 minutes ago)

some dude
Posted: July 17, 2015 at 3:47:02 PM
how did he undermine it exactly

u cant blackmail someone with public info

I take issue with (1) but there's too much about this that's not "totally normal" to go into; as for (2) that's a ... really generous attribution of motivation, considering it would have been a much bigger, better, and more defensible story for Gawker if the extortion had worked, even a little bit.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/17/gawker_libel_suit_publication_should_worried.html

with public info

WHAT THEE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

also wow that the "this post has been removed" with visible details from the story cellphone pic block is still up on the popular stories tracker

Your defense to J0rdan's technical criminal liability here is "He published the story, thereby ending the extortion attempt"; if you understood these laws you'd get why it was a crime before he ever finished typing a draft of the story. This is not libel; publication is not required.

u cant blackmail someone with public info

― lag∞n, Friday, July 17, 2015 5:48 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess this is assuming that the escort still really thought the blackmail was gonna happen successfully (when it really seems it wasn't at that point) and was upset that jordan went ahead and published before he gave the go-ahead, which we don't know at all

it's a shame they hadn't thought up the "sorry we undermined a blackmail" defense before the "sorry we outed an adulterer" defense

"if this blackmail had gone through, the corruption could have gone all the way up to the white house. you're welcome, obama!"

http://charoshane.tumblr.com/post/124353155320/about-that-gawker-post

I agree that nothing about the man’s behavior indicates he deserved the suffering this post inevitably caused in his life. Except for one thing: FULL SERVICE SEX WORK IS ILLEGAL, and he attempted to participate in this illegal activity. This basically makes the exchange “a story” regardless of who is on the other end of the transaction. It’s why local newspapers often publish police reports naming those arrested for soliciting, sometimes complete with mug shots. I’m not defending Gawker, because their decision to run this was capricious and cruel. But the reactions to this story make me even angrier than the original post.

Escort services aren't technically prostitutes.

yeah let's argue about that rather than the defn of libel

why c/p that particular paragraph from that post - the "THIS IS A STORY" one - rather than any of the bits about the post's actual points about sex worker safety?

That tumblr post makes a lot of good points

why c/p that particular paragraph from that post - the "THIS IS A STORY" one - rather than any of the bits about the post's actual points about sex worker safety?

probably because we have been talking about whether or not this is a story?