5A Defamation : Definition
Defamation law exists to protect the reputation of a person from defamatory statements made about him/her to a third party without lawful justification. A statement is defamatory if, when said about a person and published to a third party, it would make ordinary people think less of that person.
For a person to sue they must show that the defamatory language was a) used about them, b) that they were identified or identifiable and c) that the words were published to another, i.e. a third party. It doesn’t matter whether the statement is intended to be defamatory; ultimately a jury (or sometimes a judge) will decide what the broadcast is saying about the individual and whether it has unjustifiably injured their reputation.