A leading tech entrepreneur has been branded a “serious threat” to press freedom after he defended funding a legal case that bankrupted a news site.
Peter Thiel backed the wrestler Hulk Hogan’s privacy case against Gawker.
In a New York Times article on Tuesday, he said his own privacy had also been “violated” by the site and he wanted to protect press freedom.
But the campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticised his “secret” involvement in the case.
While Mr Thiel was “asking the right questions”, the campaign group said, it could not stand behind the answers he had come up with because they represented a “serious threat to the basic principles we… are defending: freedom of press and independence of media”.
Gilles Wullus, of the group, told the BBC: “These principles are universal.
“Journalism ethics should be taken care of by journalists themselves and are ultimately a matter of public and free debate.
“In case they do not, we think that nobody else can do it in their place, neither states, nor governments; especially not wealthy individuals.
He said that Mr Thiel’s campaign was “nothing different to governments using legal or economic leverage to shut down a media that happens to displease them”.
“It is even less defensible that this was kept secret,” Mr Wullus said.
“RSF knows about thousands of cases like this.”
