Trial By TikTok With Amber Heard's Lawyer, Jen Robinson

But a big takeaway from Silenced, talking about- Women, but talking about journalists as well, was defamation laws.

Mm.

And, you know, how they're being used to silence women and journalists.

But can you explain a little bit more about how that's actually happening?

Sure, and this is my entry to working on violence against women, actually.

So I work in...

Uh, I, I practice defamation law at the bar in London, and so I, I de- defend journalists against defamation claims.

So defamation laws are designed to protect people's reputations.

Mm.

So we are...

And, and it's actually protected under international human rights law.

We are entitled to privacy and to protect our good reputation.

Uh, and so defamation is the means by which, under domestic law, there's a f- f- a cause of action that allows you, if someone says something about you that damages your reputation and is untrue, you can sue them for damages.

Yeah.

And get a court judgment that says, "This is not true about this person.

It damaged their reputation.

They're gonna get compensation for it." That sounds all good and well in practice, and objectively when you stand back and think about it.

Of course we should be able to sue if someone publishes something that-

Yeah

... damages us.

The problem is, is about how that operates in practice.

And so what we show in the film, and what I saw in my legal practice, defending journalists who were doing investigative journalism stories on a serial perpetrator who had se- been sexually harassing women in the workplace.

So many of those stories never made it to the media, uh, because editors were like, "Well, how many women have accused him? Hmm."

Hmm.

"He's gonna sue us for defamation for that.