That said, the most damning item isn't that they posted the video. It's that they violated a court order to take it down.

This might be true from a legal standpoint, but from a practical/moral one I think that is the most damning thing. I can't recall of any other time a major news publication put tapes about anyone's private life and snarkily tried to push it as news.

I would hope so.

Also interesting: http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/04/media/hulk-hogan-gawker-jury...

A judge ruled Friday in St. Petersburg, Florida, that Hogan's legal team won't be able to cite Andrews' ongoing case in his defense.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Andrews

I'm confused as to what the difference between these 2 cases are?

- The Andrews suit was against the people responsible for the recording while the Gawker suit is against the people who posted the video

- as a public figure Hulk Hogan has often discussed his sex life whereas Andrews has never made that part of her public life

- Andrews clearly had no knowledge of the tape. Hulk Hogan claims he didn't either though that fact is somewhat disputed.

Apparently, Hogan made some racist comments in parts of the video that Gawker did not post and those comments have hurt Hogan's career. It did not seem like the part Gawker posted had affected his career much either way before that, though it is hard to assess emotional distress. In Andrews' case, the emotional distress argument is much compelling in my opinion. Her job as a sports reporter involves constant travel and she now feels much less safe staying at hotels knowing that she has stalkers following her and hotel staff that are willing to help those stalkers get close to her.