Publishing mogul and (an unlikely) First Amendment champion Larry Flynt has died Wednesday.
He died in Los Angeles Wednesday. The news was first reported by TMZ. TMZ quoted family sources telling them about his death.
The Washington Post confirmed his death in a story reporting that his brother told the paper but did not specify a cause.
Flynt, 78, founded Hustler magazine in the 1970s.
Flynt is also well-known for his portrayal by actor Woody Harrelson in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt" - a biographical look at his life.
He led a tumultuous life - in the late 1970s he was shot outside a Georgia courthouse after fighting an obscenity charge, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life due to the incident - a white supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin later revealed he was the shooter.
The Hollywood Reporter story reported ""It is what the people want," Flynt told People magazine in a 1977 profile. "When I started Hustler, I wanted to deal with sex as I knew it — as a boy growing up on a farm, working in a factory, on the street — four-letter words and all. That's the approach I've taken, and it cost me my freedom.""
Flynt has published numerous books and autobiographies including Sex, Lies & Politics: The Naked Truth and An Unseemly Man: My Life as Pornographer, Pundit, and Social Outcast.
He was also the owner of Hustler casino in Gardena.