Gawker’s sin was not leading with the racist tirade, posting that first and completely divorced from the sex and nudity. They could have blurred out body parts if necessary or simply released the audio of that section. That would have been far more newsworthy and relevant to the public discourse, if no less a violation of his privacy.

Leading with the sex was a massive blunder. We know why they did it, Gawker’s collective mind is in the gutter, and that’s why the jury slapped them down so hard.

But let’s not pretend that there isn’t a massive amount of bias that played into the award. After all the Judge allowed the Jury to ask a female editor if she fucked her way into her position:

Throughout the day, the judge encouraged members of the jury to submit questions to witnesses on the stand, a practice that some attorneys said was unusual. In one particularly astonishing moment, the jury asked Emma Carmichael, 26, editor-in-chief of another Gawker Media website, Jezebel, whether she had slept with either Daulerio or Denton, while working for them.

If you dig you’ll notice that they didn’t ask any of the male defense witnesses if they’d whored their way to the top, but they saw fit to ask a woman that, because to their minds women can be little more than talentless sluts.