This is a special podcast edition of On the Media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

Almost every detail of the legal battle between the American wrestler Hulk Hogan and the website Gawker is salacious.

The battle focuses on a nearly two-minute excerpt of a sex tape made in 2007 that Gawker published in 2012.

It features Hogan, real name Terry Malaya, in flagrante delicto with the then-wife of his friend,

a shock jock whose legal name is, of course, Bubba the Love Sponge, Clem.

Hogan claims he didn't know Bubba had wired his bedroom with cameras.

Documents unsealed this week show Bubba said,

Hogan certainly did know.

Hold that thought.

If you're prepared to accept this soap opera as a First Amendment test,

that dispute matters.

Meanwhile, here was Hogan on ABC's The View, explaining his grievance in terms of cyberbullying.

I made people aware that this shouldn't happen to normal people, you know, and especially any kids that are on social media, if the kids take pictures, I'm at high school,

right.

This is the, Gawker's the ultimate bully, and I just didn't want it to happen to you or anybody here.

Maybe that was his motive in filing suit, although the case began as a claim of copyright infringement.

Hogan had asserted that his naked image belonged to him, not Gawker.

But that legal strategy was unavailing.

So he asked a Florida court to find Gawker liable for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.

And the jury delivered to the tune of $115 million in compensatory damages plus $25 million more impunitive damages.

Gawker says it will appeal both on First Amendment grounds and based on suppressed evidence that Hulk Hogan was not shy about his private parts, but about his private thoughts.

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