What if a conservative politician lobbies for adultery being illegal, and then a sex tape emerges of him cheating on his wife? That's important journalism.

What if the CEO of a company intimidates an employee into having sex with him and secretly films it, and that gets released? That's also important journalism.

There are lots of other ways sex tapes could be newsworthy: a famous person makes racist comments in it (the Hogan tape!), a Hollywood director asks for sex in exchange for a role, etc. etc.

> a famous person makes racist comments in it (the Hogan tape!)

This seems to be Denton's major defense of the newsworthiness of the tape (although even he argues it half-heartedly).

I don't buy it. The racist comments on one part of the tape don't make the actual sex part newsworthy. They posted a heavily edited version of the tape, which meant they included the sex intentionally. Seems obvious the purpose of those segments was simple voyeurism, which is an invasion of privacy.

The "but he's a racist" defense strikes me as a cynical attempt to latch onto the current mainstream social-justice train, when really this has nothing to do with racism.

There is a difference between reporting on the existence of a sex tape and publishing said tape. None of the examples you gave require the tape to be published.

Do you also think that good taste required reporting on the Mohammed cartoons without actually showing them?

Yes. (But I do think the right to tasteless speech is important and worth defending)

Ah, my question is ambiguous between "showing the Mohammed cartoons would be in bad taste" and "showing the Mohammed cartoons can't be allowed because it would be in bad taste".

So let me make some points myself:

1. Publishing the cartoons themselves makes a variety of statements that can't be made by reporting on their existence without showing them.

2. Those statements have great value, independent of any questions of taste.

3. Everything slg says about the difference between publishing a report that a sex tape exists vs publishing the tape itself applies in full to the Mohammed cartoons.

The right to tasteless speech is important and worth defending, but I'm not trying to do that here. I want to counter the argument slg is making, which is that tasteless reporting should be prohibited when you could approximate the same report in better taste. The raw facts always have an inherent value beyond a reporter's interpretation of them.

You are viewing this wrong because it isn't about tastelessness. It is about infringing on the rights of others. Publishing the Mohammed comic isn't infringing on anyone's rights (at least in the US with our strong freedom of speech and lack of federal blasphemy laws.) However you have a right to not be unknowingly filmed while having sex and have that video published. In the comic example you might be offending someone's sensibilities but that isn't enough to violate their rights like the sex tape example.

Or let's use a different example like the Stanford rape case. No one is reporting the name of the victim of that case, but her name is a "raw fact" of the case. Would you support releasing her name and if not, how is that different that releasing the sex tape?

> Would you support releasing her name and if not, how is that different that releasing the sex tape?

Against someone saying there should be legal liability for releasing it, definitely.

What are those valuable statements? I don't see any value in publishing the Mohammed cartoons themselves (except perhaps as retaliation against those who went beyond the law to try to suppress them).

As I understand it, Gawker considered the racist remarks so uninteresting they didn't even include them in their original edit or coverage of the sex tape. They only became public as a result of Hulk Hogan suing.

But that's not gawkers business, so ... ?

Are all sex tapes journalism? Including revenge porn?