How Michael Lynton Made The Internet Forget A Gawker Post

The Sony chairman did what more and more executives are hiring lawyers to do: make embarrassing stories quietly disappear from archives and search engines.

- Eriq Gardner

Gawker may be gone, but Michael Lynton hasn’t forgotten a story that ran on the now-bankrupt gossip site following the 2014 hack at Sony Pictures. In fact, Sony’s outgoing chairman has in recent weeks taken advantage of the troubles that befell Gawker — in the wake of Hulk Hogan’s stunning $140 million judgment against the site — to have an unflattering story about his family quietly wiped from its archives. Not only has the post vanished, but Gawker’s administrators have attempted to “de-index” it using special metacode to ensure it isn’t cached by search engines or captured by digital preservationists.

The article in question, written by former Gawker senior writer Sam Biddle and published April 21, 2015, was largely based on Lynton’s emails at a time when Sony was threatening legal action against journalists who quoted from the hack. Had the studio taken the media to court, it surely would have invited a huge First Amendment battle. Nevertheless, when Gawker Media Group declared bankruptcy and sold most of its assets to Univision’s Fusion Media Group for $135 million in August 2016 — with the notable exception of the Gawker trademark and archives — Lynton saw an opportunity. In order to clean up its legal liabilities ahead of the sale, Gawker reached several settlements that included taking down some of its other controversial stories, along with the one about Hogan’s sex tape that brought on its demise. These removals happened after claims were officially lodged in court. It’s less clear how Lynton effectuated a removal.