Washington Post Adds Editor’s Note to Amber Heard Op-Ed at Center of Johnny Depp’s Defamation Win
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The Washington Post has added an editor’s note to the op-ed at the center of the Amber Heard–Johnny Depp defamation trial.
A Virginia jury ruled on Wednesday that Heard defamed her ex-husband when she described herself in an op-ed published by the Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp was awarded more than $10 million.
The jury also ruled that Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman had defamed Heard, and awarded her $2 million in damages.
Heard did not name Depp in the 2018 editorial, though she would later publicly accuse him of physical and sexual abuse throughout their relationship. Depp vehemently denied the allegations, claiming that he was a victim of Heard’s abuse.
The initial draft of the piece was written by the ACLU, where Heard was an ambassador. Depp’s case against Heard concerned three statements contained within it, starting with the headline: “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
Heard and the ACLU testified during the trial that a Washington Post editor had written the headline. Mediaite reached out to the Post on Wednesday afternoon to see how the paper would be handling the piece, but did not receive a reply.
On Thursday morning, an editor’s note had been added to the editorial, noting the three statements ruled defamatory by the Virginia jury:
Editor’s note, June 2, 2022: In 2019, Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation arising out of this 2018 op-ed. On June 1, 2022, following a trial in Fairfax County, Va. Circuit Court, a jury found Heard liable on three counts for the following statements, which Depp claimed were false and defamatory: (1) “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” (2) “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” (3) “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” The jury separately found that Depp, through his lawyer Adam Waldman, defamed Heard in one of three counts in her countersuit.
Read the op-ed here.
