On Wednesday her ex-husband Johnny Depp prevailed in a defamation case stemming from the op-ed, during which Heard referred to as herself a “public determine representing home abuse.” Whereas the jury mentioned each Heard and Depp have been responsible for defamation of their lawsuits in opposition to one another, they awarded considerably extra damages to Depp.
The Submit’s story concerning the verdict is on Thursday’s entrance web page. “Some cheered for what they noticed as a victory for males who’re wrongly accused of bodily and sexual abuse, whereas the choice struck others as a merciless assertion on the rights of victims to talk out,” Travis M. Andrews and Emily Yahr wrote.
So what concerning the op-ed? The trial revealed that the primary draft was ghostwritten by staffers on the ACLU. Moreover, the headline -— “I spoke up in opposition to sexual violence — and confronted our tradition’s wrath. That has to alter.” — was written by a Submit editor, which is a typical follow. However the verdict underscored “how Heard is finally answerable for the phrases within the op-ed,” as a result of she signed her title, Insider’s Jacob Shamsian and Ashley Collman wrote.
After the decision, executives on the Submit determined to append an editor’s observe to the unique piece, notifying readers of what the jury had concluded.
The observe, added on Thursday, was easy: “On June 1, 2022, following a trial in Fairfax County, Va. Circuit Courtroom, a jury discovered Heard liable on three counts for the next statements, which Depp claimed have been false and defamatory: (1) ‘I spoke up in opposition to sexual violence — and confronted our tradition’s wrath. That has to alter.’ (2) ‘Then two years in the past, I turned a public determine representing home abuse, and I felt the total power of our tradition’s wrath for girls who communicate out.’ (3) ‘I had the uncommon vantage level of seeing, in actual time, how establishments defend males accused of abuse.’ The jury individually discovered that Depp, by means of his lawyer Adam Waldman, defamed Heard in certainly one of three counts in her countersuit.”
“Trial by TikTok”
The worldwide media hoopla about Depp and Heard was about rather more than an op-ed, in fact. As civil trial lawyer David Ring mentioned, an “unbelievable quantity of court docket sources” have been spent on “two individuals who clearly cannot stand one another, who’re airing all their soiled laundry and suing one another for cash they do not essentially want.”
The trial additionally represented a melding of conventional media with the worlds of TikTok and YouTube. The BBC’s David Sillito spoke with trial watchers who become digital contributors in a “trial by TikTok,” with posts favoring Depp far eclipsing these supporting Heard. The #JusticeForJohnnyDepp hashtag has garnered roughly 19 billion views, whereas #JusticeForAmberHeard has amassed about 69 million views.
Jill Filipovic, a progressive author, argued that the trial turned a reputation contest: “The query on this trial was whether or not a really particular set of clearly very lawyered phrases met the very excessive bar for defamation. Sadly the jurors addressed a completely completely different query, which was: ‘who can we like higher, Johnny Depp or Amber Heard?'”
“As soon as the narrative of ‘Heard dangerous, Depp good’ solidified, so too did the feverish rush to piece collectively the proof in a manner that might help it,” Caroline Framke wrote for Selection.
Others noticed it in a different way. “The folks thought Johnny Depp could also be a foul boy, however Amber Heard was worse — and they might not let her seize the function of sufferer just because it match a script,” conservative author Dan McLaughlin mentioned.
On Wednesday “all of the cable information networks coated the studying of the decision dwell,” Arizona Republic media critic Invoice Goodykoontz wrote. “Many of the broadcast networks minimize into programming for it, too.” Regulation & Crime Community registered 3 million simultaneous live-streaming viewers on YouTube whereas the decision was learn.
“Now that the Depp-Heard present is lurching to a detailed,” AdAge’s Simon Dumenco wrote, it is “exhausting to think about what the celebrity-industrial advanced, and the media trade on the whole, will discover to exchange it.”
“A digital-age witch trial”
CNN’S SARA ASHLEY O’BRIEN WRITES:
“A digital-age witch trial” —- that is how Mary Anne Franks of College of Miami’s College of Regulation described Depp’s case in opposition to Heard in an electronic mail to me shortly after Wednesday’s verdict. Franks mentioned the trial was “supposed to roll again the minor progress made by the #MeToo motion.”
“It isn’t simply that the extraordinarily severe situation of home violence was become a lurid spectacle on social media, but additionally that mainstream media and public discourse so completely purchased into the misogynist narrative that obscured the underlying — and easy — authorized points,” mentioned Franks, who in a 2019 paper wrote, “ladies’s speech that has been most feared, and thus extensively regulated, criticized, and prohibited all through American historical past.”
“The general message is obvious: the legislation would not defend free speech when ladies communicate out in opposition to males,” Franks advised me.
All all through the trial, specialists mentioned that the methods during which Depp was heralded whereas Heard was picked aside on platforms like TikTok would have broader ramifications for others contemplating talking out about sexual assault or home violence. Regardless of the gravity of the testimonies on the trial, Heard’s abuse claims have been excused and cruelly mocked. Whereas many commenters have been certainly real followers of Depp, the pro-Depp stance wasn’t all natural: As Vice reported, the Every day Wire had spent hundreds of {dollars} selling advertisements of articles that largely favored Depp.
In latest days, there gave the impression to be rising consideration to the therapy of Heard, which did not match what these taking within the trial have been seeing. Tarana Burke’s “MeToo” Motion group issued a assertion acknowledging the “mockery of assault, disgrace and blame” over the weeks of the trial, calling it a “poisonous disaster and one of many largest defamations of the motion.”
“Bigger than this trial and jury resolution is a motion made up of thousands and thousands of survivors combating for his or her dignity and their proper to hunt justice, and a rustic that also has to reckon with why it’s so invested within the ache and anguish of violence, somewhat than remedying it,” the assertion continued.
>> Rolling Stone’s important homepage headline proper now’s about “survivors ‘sickened’ by the Amber Heard verdict…”
>> A second story says “Republicans are doing backflips” over Depp’s victory…
What now?
CHLOE MELAS WRITES:
Now that Depp has been awarded $10 million in compensatory damages — will Heard be capable to afford this? And can Depp implement it? A rep for Heard (who was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages) advised CNN following the decision that she plans to enchantment. The larger query is, did Depp simply do all of this not for monetary acquire however to easily show a degree? He mentioned on the stand he needed to clear his title and in his Wednesday evening assertion he mentioned the “jury gave me my life again…”
>> In the meantime, Depp remains to be within the UK: “He was seen celebrating at a pub in Newcastle with [Jeff] Beck and UK singer Sam Fender,” per The Every day Mail…
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