Gawker Media
M2A1: Case Study: Gawker Media
Is Gawker Media an Ethical Company?
In my opinion, Gawker Media cannot be regarded an ethical company. Being a gossip website, the company has on several occasions violated the privacy of others and jeopardized the operations of several entities.
To begin with, it is clear that Gawker Media could go to any length to get that which it really needs to maximize page views. For instance, in an attempt to get a 'hot story,' Gizmodo, which is an affiliated site of Gawker, offered to buy an unreleased Apple phone an engineer working for the company had lost. The company then went ahead and published photos of the phone -- in the end being "rewarded with roughly twenty million page views" (McGrath, 2010). In Apple's opinion, this was akin to dealing in stolen property. By releasing photos of Apple's future phone, a prototype (Apple would obviously have wanted to keep such a device under wraps for competitive reasons), to the public, the company effectively leaked out what, in my opinion, was privileged/proprietary information, thus effectively jeopardizing Apple's operations.
It is clear that the company engages in checkbook journalism -- which has been variously defined as the act of seeking out information and paying for such information if it meets a certain criteria. In my opinion, checkbook journalism is largely an unethical practice. In the opinion of Michael Wines of the Times, in reputable journalism, paying for information is a cardinal sin…" (Goldstein, 2007, p. 118).
It is important to note that for a company to be regarded ethical, its owners, founders, or sponsors have to adhere, or be seen to adhere, to certain ethical standards. Taking into consideration what most of those who have interacted with Nick Denton, the proprietor as well as founder of Gawker, say, he does not fit the description...
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