Megyn Kelly had an interesting bit on her show recently on a subject I know absolutely nothing about: celebrity gossip and defamation. Basically the lawyer representing film director Justin Baldoni discussed their civil liability suit against the New York Times. The only interesting aspect to me was the NYT doing what they do best, taking the low road by publishing personal text messages that snipped out crucial details: the ‘sarcasm’ emoji that changed the meaning to suit their hit piece:
When I read it I was like they’ve got them dead to rights… There’s these two PR hacks sitting there saying like ‘we planted this Daily Mail piece’ saying ‘she’s (Blake Lively) going to be canceled’, ‘she’s a bad person’, and they’re celebrating it.
And in your lawsuit against the New York Times, you offer up the rest of that text exchange. And I don’t just mean what follows like in a line or two. Right after on the same line as the lines that are quoted in the lawsuit, in the complaint and in the Times, there is for example the sarcasm emoji. And more importantly an explicit denial by by Melissa Nathan as she writes this, that it wasn’t her.
So what the full text exchange that you’ve offered now shows is Jen Abel saying to Melissa, “Wow you really outdid yourself with this piece,” with the sarcasm emoij, which is an upside down smiley face. They took out the sarcasm emoji in the New York Times.
Megyn Kelly
The emoji in question:
As you can see, there are different meanings that depend on the context of the text conversation and emoji always work best in short, gossipy, throwaway text messages…the job they were designed for. But I wonder how emoji as context will play out in the courtroom. Does a ‘sarcasm emoji’ carry the same weight as text that says ‘I’m joking’ or ‘I’m being sarcastic? Is emoji even considered or given equal weight of text or is it something open to interpretation and speculation? It’s fascinating to consider that those light little NTT DoCoMo throwaway emoji created by Shigetaka Kurita have come to have heavy implications in a court case. Who could have predicted that gossip gurls using funny little text icons would have social implications 😂
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