In late May, in a bombshell that Gawker apparently never saw coming, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and chairman of the lucrative Clarion Capital hedge fund, revealed that he had secretly ponied up $10 million to help pay Hogan’s legal expenses. Thiel had been outed as gay in a 2007 article posted on a Gawker-controlled website. His decision to come to Hogan’s aid, he explained in an interview with New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, was “less about revenge and more about specific deterrence. I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection to the public interest.” Notwithstanding Gawker’s undeniable sleaziness, the crippling damage award entered against it carries enormous implications for other, entirely legitimate publications accused of going too far in exposes of public figures. Just as Trump has created a model for defamation attacks on the media, some commentators, such as Fusion’s Felix Salmon, fear that Thiel has fashioned a “blueprint” for other billionaires to transform the “concept of philanthropy” into “weapons-grade attacks on America’s free press.” Should the jury’s verdict be upheld on appeal, its impact could indeed be far-reaching. In the meantime, Thiel will be heading to the Republican convention next month in Cleveland as a California delegate for—you guessed it—Donald Trump. Clinton, Trump and the Chilling Effect of Government Surveillance As important as they are, the dangers to press freedoms stemming from right-wing Republican litigation are by no means the most severe. Even greater are the threats that come from government surveillance and the prosecution of whistleblowers—practices that are strictly bipartisan. The mass spying systems erected by the NSA, FBI, CIA and other government agencies in the aftermath of 9/11 not only imperil Fourth Amendment rights, but they also have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, curtailing investigative reporting as well as the public’s access to vital information. As the writers’ advocacy group Pen America concluded in a 2013 study, the modern security state has forced some journalists to self-censor their work, and also left confidential informants afraid to come forward. Writers, too, have become targets of direct harassment. In perhaps the most egregious instance of its kind, New York Times reporter James Risen was threatened with federal prosecution for seven years for refusing to testify in the espionage trial of former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling. Both journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras were also threatened with arrest after their receipt of evidence from Edward Snowden of covert NSA spying. Even before the Snowden leak, Poitras had been detained some 40 times by agents of the Department of Homeland Security at American airports because of her work on U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. Under the Obama administration, there have been eight prosecutions of whistleblowers for violations of the 1917 Espionage Act. Before Obama, there had been only three. The subject of what to do with Snowden, the most famous whistleblower of them all, was raised during the primary season in the presidential debates of both parties. In a GOP session in March, Trump branded the former NSA contractor “a spy” who should be brought back from Putin’s Russia to face trial. In the first Democratic debate, in October, Clinton took a nearly identical position, declaring that Snowden “broke the law” and shouldn’t be allowed to return home “without facing the music.” In a speech delivered in December after the Islamic State-inspired mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, she went further, calling for an “intelligence surge” in the war on terror, including greater monitoring of suspects and increased oversight of social media. She has renewed those calls in the aftermath of Sunday’s carnage in Orlando, Fla., while Trump has launched several Islamophobic tirades. Whatever important differences they may have in other policy areas or in terms of personal style, temperament and experience, neither Trump nor Clinton can be counted on as an ally or partner in the struggle to preserve freedom of the press against excessive state surveillance. To protect a free and open press — to the extent it is still possible at all — we’ll have to rely on ourselves, remaining ever skeptical of those in power, and, as the old saying goes, “eternally vigilant.” Your support is crucial...

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#2016 election#buzzfeed#defamation#donald trump#fbi#first amendment#gawker#hillary clinton#huffington post#hulk hogan#jeff bezos#media#mitt romney#mother jones#national review#new york times#nsa#peter thiel#press#super pac#surveillance#td-original#univision#usa#washington post