Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press | |
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Directed by | Brian Knappenberger |
Produced by | Brian Knappenberger Femke Wolting Korelan Matteson |
Edited by | Andrew Mcallister |
Music by | Garron Chang |
Production companies | |
Release date |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is a 2017 Netflix documentary directed by Brian Knappenberger. [1] [2] [3] The documentary is themed around the effects of big money on American journalism. The documentary focuses on two incidents: Peter Thiel financing wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, and casino owner Sheldon Adelson's secret purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal . [4]
The film starts with the legal proceedings of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, who (with the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel) had filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media, seeking $100 million in damages for releasing a sex tape featuring him and Heather Clem. Gawker Media subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as a direct result of the lawsuit. [5] Thiel had reportedly wanted to bring Gawker down for having published an article nine years earlier which outed him as gay. [6] [7]
The film then covers an incident where casino mogul Sheldon Adelson bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal, while keeping his identity as the buyer a secret, even to the journalists employed by the company. [8] The management also did not reveal the new owner of the company to the employees, and denied that the Adelson family was involved when asked about the possibility. Adelson himself had also denied his ownership in an interview with CNN. [9] This caused a couple of its journalists to start investigating it on their own by calling their contacts. They eventually uncovered that Sheldon Adelson was indeed the new owner, and after publishing an article with the revelation, were forced to step down. [10]
Nobody Speak has mostly been well received by critics. It holds an 89% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes [11] with an average rating of 6.8/10 based on 23 reviews. The film has a score of 69 on Metacritic, indicating generally favourable reviews. [11]
MGM Resorts International is an American global hospitality and entertainment company operating destination resorts in Las Vegas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Maryland, Ohio, and New Jersey, including Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, and Park MGM.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of June 2023, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion and was ranked 213th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Strat Hotel & Casino & Tower is a hotel and casino located in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. It includes a 1,149 ft (350.2 m) observation tower, the tallest in the United States. It is also the second-tallest observation tower in the Western Hemisphere, surpassed only by the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario. The tower is topped by a skypod which includes a revolving restaurant, lounges, and observation decks. The top of the tower also has several thrill rides. The hotel and casino facilities are situated at the base of the tower, and the resort also includes a showroom and a shopping mall. The Stratosphere is located within city limits on Las Vegas Boulevard, just north of the Las Vegas Strip. The resort is sometimes considered to be a Strip property, although Clark County does not officially recognize it as such, stating that the Strip does not extend into city limits.
Robin Douglas Leach was a British-American entertainment reporter and writer from London. After beginning his career as a print journalist, first in England and then in the United States, he became best known for hosting the television series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from 1984 to 1995. The show focused on profiling well-known celebrities and their lavish homes, cars and other materialistic details.
The Venetian Las Vegas is a luxury hotel and casino resort located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States. It is owned by Vici Properties and operated by Apollo Global Management. It was developed by businessman Sheldon Adelson through his company, Las Vegas Sands. The Venetian was built on the former site of the Sands Hotel and Casino, which was closed and demolished in 1996.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. is an American casino and resort company with corporate headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. It was founded by Sheldon G. Adelson and his partners out of the Sands Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The Sands was demolished and redeveloped as The Venetian, opening in 1999. An adjacent resort, The Palazzo, opened in 2007. Both resorts were sold in 2022.
The Sands Hotel and Casino was a historic American hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States, that operated from 1952 to 1996. Designed by architect Wayne McAllister, with a prominent 56-foot (17 m) high sign, the Sands was the seventh resort to open on the Strip. During its heyday, it hosted many famous entertainers of the day, most notably the Rat Pack and Jerry Lewis.
Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Sheldon Gary Adelson was an American businessman, investor, political donor, and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022. He owned the Israeli daily newspaper Israel Hayom, the Israeli weekly newspaper Makor Rishon, and the American daily newspaper the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Gawker Media LLC was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, as of 2012, Gawker Media was the parent company for seven different weblogs and many subsites under them: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel. All Gawker articles are licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. In 2004, the company renamed from Blogwire, Inc. to Gawker Media, Inc., and to Gawker Media LLC shortly after.
Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist, and blogger. He is the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York City-based Gawker, until a lawsuit by Terry Bollea bankrupted the company.
The Palazzo is a luxury hotel and casino resort located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The Palazzo is part of a larger complex comprising the adjoining Venetian resort and Venetian Expo, all of which are owned by Vici Properties and operated by Apollo Global Management. The complex ranks as the second-largest hotel in the world.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is a daily subscription newspaper published in Las Vegas, Nevada, since 1909. It is the largest circulating daily newspaper in Nevada and one of two daily newspapers in the Las Vegas area.
Stephens Media LLC was a Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, diversified media investment company. It owned stakes in the California Newspapers Partnership and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Owen Thomas is an American blogger, journalist, and entrepreneur who serves as managing editor of the San Francisco Business Times.
Ryan Holiday is an American marketer, author, businessman and podcaster, notable for marketing Stoic philosophy in the form of books.
Miriam Adelson is an American and Israeli physician, philanthropist and political donor. She was married to Sheldon Adelson from 1991 until his death in 2021. After his death, she became the owner of the Las Vegas Sands and is estimated to be the fifth richest woman in America, with a net worth of $32.8 billion, as of November 2023. She is the richest Israeli in the world, and the 42nd richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, while Forbes places her as the 44th.
Brian Knappenberger is an American documentary filmmaker, known for The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, and Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror and his work on Bloomberg Game Changers.
Bollea v. Gawker was a lawsuit filed in 2013 in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County, Florida, delivering a verdict on March 18, 2016. In the suit, Terry Gene Bollea, known professionally as Hulk Hogan, sued Gawker Media, publisher of the Gawker website, and several Gawker employees and Gawker-affiliated entities for posting portions of a sex tape of Bollea with Heather Clem, at that time the wife of radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. Bollea's claims included invasion of privacy, infringement of personality rights, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Prior to trial, Bollea's lawyers said the privacy of many Americans was at stake while Gawker's lawyers said that the case could hurt freedom of the press in the United States.
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016.