Former Gawker editor Albert Daulerio drew shock in a Florida courtroom on Wednesday when he sarcastically said that he’d publish almost any celebrity sex tape—unless the subject is younger than four.
Daulerio’s videotaped testimony was shown during a trial that began Monday, in which Hulk Hogan—or, legally, Terry G. Bollea—is suing Gawker for damages after the site published a video showing the wrestler having sex with a woman married to his friend.
Bollea is seeking $100 million in damages for the 2012 publication of the secretly recorded tape, according to The New York Times.
In Daulerio’s testimony, which was taped last year, the plaintiff’s lawyer asked whether there is any circumstance in which a celebrity sex tape would not be worth publishing. Daulerio replied, “If they were a child.” When the lawyer persisted by asking what age that child would have to be, Daulerio sarcastically responded “four.”
In a statement to Coins2Day, Gawker reiterated that Daulerio was being saracastic: “He’d just said in the prior answer [of the deposition tape] that he wouldn’t post a tape of a child and when the question was repeated he obviously made the point in a flip way because his answer was already clear.”
Sarcastic or not, testimony by Gawker’s staff has placed the site’s journalistic ethics in the spotlight.