Gawker has long delighted in thumbing its nose at journalism convention, and that’s fine. On the other hand it makes no bones about it being a journalism organization, and it certainly is. Flouting convention is one thing. Allowing a death-row inmate to whitewash the facts of his case, and his role in a grisly murder, without any vetting is another matter altogether.
Yeah I hate Gawker as much as the next person but I did learn in the piece on the Rob Ford saga I posted yesterday -- no link, phone -- that being amoral Gawker had a lot of leeway and their breaking of the story directly allowed the Toronto Star to run a real, sources story under the cover of legal protection. So that's interesting.