Don't think the issue is that Gawker reported that Hogan was taped having sex with his friend's wife.

No, the issue is that they literally wrote a headline bragging about ignoring a court order to take it down[0].

Whether or not the lawsuit itself was justified (though the jury ultimately did thing so), it's pretty stupid to ignore a court order. It's even more appalling to brag about it the way they did. Quite frankly, they kind of got off easy, since the consequences could have been a lot worse. People literally go to jail for behavior like that. Look at Kim Davis, who was jailed for contempt.

[0] http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hoga...

I don't understand. Why did gawker fight for this? Was there any big ideal behind it or just for the lulz? I can understand if it was the President instead of hulk Hogan, but it's just a private individual in his private premises doing perfectly legal things. Why would you publish this and then fight the judicial system over it?

The biggest reason is that Gawker had a court order not to release the tape, and then did anyway.

That's a very different issue than publishing a story.

No, they had a court order to take down the post, including the excerpt of the video that they posted, and they only took down the video (and, on appeal, was found to be in the right).

I'm very glad that a lot of people here have zero chance to have any political influence, ever.