CEO Tim Cook Reportedly Ordered Apple TV to Shut Down Gawker Show

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly shutdown a project for the company's streaming service Apple TV+ about the Gawker Media, the now-defunct blogging network that outed him as gay in 2008, according to a report from The New York Times.

The idea for the show, called "Scraper," was sold to Apple by Cord Jefferson, who worked at Gawker but left the company to write for TV, and Max Reed, Gawker's former editor-in-chief. Apple also hired two more former Gawker editors as writers, Emma Carmichael and Leah Beckmann, who reportedly completed a number of episodes.

But when Cook learned of the project, he allegedly shut it down. The NYTimes writes Cook "Was surprised to learn that his company was making a show about Gawker, which had humiliated the company at various times and famously outed him, back in 2008, as gay. He expressed a distinctly negative view toward Gawker, the people said. Apple proceeded to kill the project. And now, the show is back on the market and the executive who brought it in, Layne Eskridge, has left the company. Gawker, it seems, is making trouble again."

Cook publicly came out as gay in 2014, becoming the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to do so.

Click here to read the newspaper's full report.