Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press

— Yes, I smiled at mentions of the “Bollea (Hulk Hogan) v. Gawker” case when it was in the news but Brian Knappenberger’s documentary makes a compelling case for its critical importance among First Amendment tests. After fighting the case in federal court and having Gawker’s right to publish the material in question affirmed, the case was refiled in a St. Petersburg, FL, civil court where the local jury pool wasn’t as likely to care so much about Gawker’s rights. In an age of billionaires, Hogan’s case was financed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, not necessarily to safeguard Hogan’s rights or to change Gawker’s policies, but to break Gawker—and that’s just what it did. Both Gawker and its founder, Nick Denton, were bankrupted after Hogan was awarded $115 million. In the past, wealthy people bought newspapers; now they can eradicate them. A good amount of time is also spent looking at the surprise, secret sale of the "Las Vegas Review-Journal” to billionaire Sheldon Adelson and the resulting departure of most of their long-time reporters. The film does a good job with these parts of the story but obviously was nearly complete before the surprise election of Donald Trump resulted in expanding the film. Remember, Thiel was a member of Trump’s transition team and Adelson contributes heavily to Republican candidates, so the filmmaker has added Trump and his attitudes toward the media to the mix. The potential threat is clear, but this documentary suffers from too many edits as it tried to keep up with the shifting sands affecting the free press. Even so, the message is so credible as to make this worth seeing.

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[2017. 95 min. Written and directed by Brian Knappenberger.]
http://blogcritics.org/sxsw-review-nobody-speak-trials-of-the-free-press/