Even though a St. Petersburg, Fla., jury awarded pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan $140 million in his lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing his sex tape in 2012, founder Nick Denton is still standing by his company. In an interview with "Good Morning America," Denton opened up about why he felt Hulk Hogan's sex tape was newsworthy and confirmed that he plans to appeal the ruling.
In 2012, online publication Gawker posted a 1-minute, 41-second clip of a 2006 sex tape featuring The Hulkster (real name Terry Bollea) having sex with Heather Clem, the wife of his former best friend and Tampa radio shock jock Bubba "The Love Sponge" Clem. Hogan sued Gawker for $100 million for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress, and last week a jury awarded Hogan $115 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages. But Denton stands by his company's decision to post the tape as a newsworthy story.
"We didn't post the sex tape, we posted 9 seconds of sexual activity in an excerpt of a much much longer tape," Denton said. "It was in the context of a story, the story has been found newsworthy by a federal judge, by the appeals court on repeated occasions. I believe it was newsworthy, those judges agreed it was newsworthy and so it is a story we would do again."
Denton also cleared up a shocking moment of the trial when former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio said on the witness stand that he would publish a sex tape involving a child celebrity as long as the child was more than 4 years old.
"It was absolutely a damaging moment," Denton said. "It was a flip remark he made at the end of the day, he was being harried by Hogan's lawyers. The same question was being asked repeatedly and they got to him and we paid a price."
But Denton stressed that the trial comes down to publicity versus the free press and explained that Hogan had been open about his sex life and even made appearances on "The Howard Stern Show" and TMZ joking about the tape.
"You know, [as a journalist], if you actually were feeling every single thing that a subject was feeling when a story came out, frankly, there would be no news. No stories would actually ever get written and we do put the story first, and I am unapologetic about that," he said.
Watch Denton's full "Good Morning America" interview below.
