From disbelief to rage: How the mainstream media covered Johnny Depp's victory over Amber Heard
Johnny Depp prevailed in his defamation case against Amber Heard after the latter called herself a "public figure representing domestic abuse" in a 2018 op-ed. While Depp had already won in the court of public opinion, the official verdict triggered an avalanche of ridicule and contempt from pro-Heard pundits in the mainstream media.
After deliberating over three days, the Virginia-based jury ruled in a unanimous decision that Heard defamed Depp when she called herself a victim of domestic abuse. She was ordered to pay $15 million in damages, including $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The jury also awarded Heard compensatory damages of $2 million as she was defamed when Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman called her abuse allegations a hoax.
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The aforementioned verdict was celebrated by swathes of Depp fans across the globe but a number of establishment media analysts and columnists did not take it so well. MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos flat out declared that "the jury got it wrong." He said that while both sides technically won, the verdict was overwhelmingly in Depp's favor. "The jury should have instead held neither side liable in Depp’s $50 million suit against Heard and Heard’s $100 million countersuit. In other words, no one should have won; everyone should have lost," Cevallos opined. Rolling Stone author EJ Dickson wrote that domestic abuse survivors were "sickened" by the verdict. "The trial has had the impact of sending survivors down a rabbit hole of re-experiencing not just the grisly details of their abuse, but the aftermath — particularly, watching their abuser get away with it," Dickson alleged.
CNN's tech and culture writer Sara Ashley O'Brien wrote that Heard's abuse claims were "excused and cruelly mocked" despite "the gravity of the testimonies at the trial." She claimed that while many supported Depp, "the pro-Depp stance wasn't all organic," citing a report about the Daily Wire allegedly "spending thousands of dollars promoting ads of articles that largely favored Depp."
New York Post editor Maureen Callahan didn't attempt to hide her contempt for Depp. "A movie star beloved by Gen X peers and little kids was revealed to be an alcoholic, drug-addicted mess whose alter-ego was 'The Monster,' a man ruled by a UK court as a wife-beater," she wrote on a Wednesday, June 1 op-ed. "He did it to himself. He didn’t have to bring this suit. But because he clearly avoided good advice from expensive people, Johnny Depp determined that this was the only way to salvage his reputation."
Callahan said she found Heard's testimony "persuasive" and it did not sit well with her that Depp "is still regarded as a rapscallion, a charming bad boy (ugh), while Heard is considered vile, a c–t, any number of vicious appellations the incel online hive mind has thrown at her." In conclusion, she claimed that Depp may have "won" the trial on paper, but he "also lost" considering Disney "will never hire him again," albeit the actor himself vowed never to work with the entertainment giant again. "He’s pushing 60, seems a hopeless addict, and will never outrun what he wanted more than anything: A celebrity show trial for the Internet age," Callahan added.
Guardian columnist Moira Donegan entitled her op-ed "The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial was an orgy of misogyny." According to her, the jury's unanimous verdict "will have a devastating effect on survivors, who will be silenced, now, with the knowledge that they cannot speak about their violent experiences at men’s hands without the threat of a ruinous libel suit." She declared, "In that sense, women’s speech just became a lot less free." Donegan went on to trivialize Depp's lawsuit as "frivolous and punitive" and concluded that "women are punished for coming forward." She added, "What happens to women who allege abuse? They get publicly pilloried, professionally blacklisted, socially ostracized, mocked endlessly on social media, and sued. Wrath, indeed."
But despite the barrage of opinions from media pundits, Depp appears to be “at peace” with the verdict and has thanked the jury for giving his “life back".
The exes were squaring off over a 2018 op-ed Heard wrote for The Washington Post, where she called herself a domestic violence survivor. Depp claimed that he was booted from the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' franchise because Heard's op-ed implicated that he was the abuser. The article, however, did not mention Depp by name. The actor sued Heard for $50 million and she countersued him for $100 million, claiming Depp ran a smear campaign for years in an attempt to silence her and destroy her acting career.