Nina Funnell

They said, all right, go away and put together a pitch.

I

That was an interesting process in and of itself because I remember thinking like, you know, I'm running for a national outlet.

I'm trying to draw attention to a law that frankly no one in Tasmania even seems to think is that much of a problem.

No one was calling it a gag law at the time.

They were just calling it, in fact, the local sexual assault service in Tasmania thought it was a good thing that survivors had to go to court and ask for permission because they thought that that would stop exploitative journalism by adding in an extra step.

It was bizarre.

Yeah, very good question.

So I was like, how do I design a campaign?

My one and only case study is living in LA and can't be named or photographed.

So it's very hard to humanize the issue when you can't name and photograph people.

So I'm writing about the smallest state, which people around the country don't necessarily click on articles about.

How do I make this national news and how do I get people to care about it?

And so the answer to that was the first thing that we decided to do was to call it a gag law.

It immediately kind of constructs what the problem is.

Yeah.

The second thing was I decided that I would interview victim survivors from every other state that didn't have gag laws, who had already gone public, to ask them why that had been important for them to be able to tell their story on their own terms.

So I photographed and I got them all to hold a sign that said, let her speak.

So that became the name of the campaign, hashtag let her speak.

So people like Saxon Mullins, Tara Moss.