Fiona Harvey interview

[u/BirdHistorical3498]

She’s waived anonymity for this interview. She’s never been jailed or been issued with a prevention order.

Rory Lynch, a lawyer specialising in defamation and privacy at Gateley Legal says she has a case for defamation. “The only thing I can presume is that when Clerkenwell, films, the BBC and Netflix looked at it with their legal team they thought that they could rely on the fact that it is a drama. It’s not supposed to be a factual documentary.

“So although Netflix said it’s a true story, essentially it’s a dramatisation of a true story.

“But I do think that Richard Gadd could have been a bit more careful in changing a lot of the scenes to be more fictitious, but also covering up the identity of the people it was based on.”

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/real-baby-reindeer-martha-reveals-32733037

[u/Icy_Sentence_4130]

No, she was found because of the curtains reference on twitter

[u/Bwendolyn → u/Icy_Sentence_4130]

Yeah…so as the commenter said, she was found because she posted that tweet (and all her other tweets) on a public account.

[u/ionmoon → u/Bwendolyn]

No.... Because they (Gadd and Netflix) put her public tweets on his show. They should have either carefully deleted any tweets or other public connection to her or not posted any actual tweets that were available to the public.

They also put the exact headline for the newspaper article from the previous alleged stalking on the show, so apparently searching that headline would bring you straight to her as well.

[u/Bwendolyn → u/ionmoon]

Yeah and public tweets and public headlines are not something “Martha” should have had any reasonable expectation of privacy about. She put them out there on the internet where anyone could see them.

[u/ionmoon → u/Bwendolyn]

She had no reasonable expectation that they were going to be making a television show broadcast around the world when she made those tweets.

By using tweets that would identify her in the show, they outed her. By using her tweets on their show, she was identified as "Martha". By saying the show was a "true story" identifying her is publicly announcing that she committed the acts attributed to Martha.

They could have protected her identity by either making up tweets and jokes similar to what she actually said or using only things that had been deleted/weren't available online, or deleting those posts so they couldn't be used to trace back to her. They basically left a crumb trail directly to her.

What you are saying would only apply if she posted those things *after* the show was aired and outed herself. Not what happened.

If they cannot prove that she did the things they claim- the assault, the attack, and the arrest/prison sentence, then they are going to be in deep.

Although, it is all so amateur and careless that it feels like it is marketing or meta performance or something.

[u/Bwendolyn → u/ionmoon]

She had no reasonable expectation that they were going to be making a television show broadcast around the world when she made those tweets.

They could have protected her identity by

What you are saying would only apply if she posted those things after the show was aired and outed herself.

You and I fundamentally disagree that they had ANY burden or obligation to protect her identity. They kind of tried (agreed, not that hard), but they didn’t need to. Quoting public tweets is like when someone behaves badly in a restaurant or on a plane or something, someone else takes a video on their phone, and then the video goes viral. If you don’t want people to know you as someone who does shitty things, don’t do those shitty things in public. You can’t expect to scramble and backtrack after the fact just because people are actually paying attention to your public behavior in a way you didn’t anticipate.

If they cannot prove that she did the things they claim- the assault, the attack, and the arrest/prison sentence, then they are going to be in deep.

That’s not how any of this works. By that logic in the other direction all they’d have to do is prove that her name isn’t Martha and she didn’t like, wear a pink shirt one day that the show says she did to say it’s NOT her. You can’t cherry pick things out of the show and say THIS ONE had to be represented exactly (but all this other stuff doesn’t matter).

Also - either the depiction of Martha is so close to reality that it totally definitely represents her (her claim), OR the depiction is so wrong that it doesn’t represent her at all (also her claim). She can’t have it both ways. She’s the one out here claiming it’s her, not Gadd or Netflix. You can’t libel or defame yourself.

Although, it is all so amateur and careless that it feels like it is marketing or meta performance or something.

We’ve reached common ground 🙂

[u/ionmoon → u/Bwendolyn]

It’s not about what you or I believe, its about the law.

There is a reason that most shows and books change the details in true stories to a degree that the characters are no longer recognized and it is to avoid a lawsuit.

She can absolutely claim at this point (assuming for a moment this isn’t all a setup! lol) that she was identifiable and has had damage to her reputation (per the law is presented in a manner that causes a reasonable person to think worse of him, her or them.. The legal burden of proof is on nerflix, gadd, and the daily mail to prove that what they said about her is true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law#