Vanity Fair has stopped credentialing a journalist after viral video captured her smiling and winking at the camera during the trial of Lindsay Clancy.
On Monday, journalist Brittany Romano generated millions of views during a live feed after she was seen winking and smiling at a pool camera. In a statement to Fox News, the outlet said that Romano had been sent to cover the trial, adding she had a personal connection to Lindsay Clancy, who faces three counts of first degree murder for the strangulation of her three children – Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months).
“We were interested in the prospect of a personal essay by Brittany Romano about her experience growing up with Lindsay Clancy. Yesterday, after clear conflicts with our editorial standards and processes, we informed Romano that we were not moving forward with her essay and informed the court that she is no longer credentialed by Vanity Fair,” it said.
Romano, however, said that she “never had a contract” with Vanity Fair, adding that she worked as a freelance journalist. In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Romano wrote that she smiles out of anxiety, not indifference.
“A smile is not a crime. Telling a woman to slit her wrists is,” she said.
“For two years I have fought to cover the Lindsay Clancy case honestly, because at its center is a mother accused of killing her three children during postpartum psychosis, and because the conversation around her has spent that whole time swinging between calling her a monster and asking what actually broke inside her. Women’s mental health was never a side note in that coverage, it was the whole point,” she added. “I smile through anxiety. I smile when I’m uncomfortable. That is not indifference, it is a nervous system managing strain the only way it knows how.”
Weeks before that viral incident, Romano shared posts on her X account in support of Lindsay Clancy and even insinuating that her ex-husband Patrick was guilty of a crime.
“Raise your hand if you have a criminal defense attorney on retainer ‘just because,'” she wrote on August 9. “Not many? Yeah, same. So why does Patrick Clancy?… His attorney specializes in homicide. Just asking.”
Days prior, she amplified a talking point of the TikTok subculture that has argued Clancy’s then-husband committed the murders and framed her — that he had different shoes on when he entered CVS and when he entered a restaurant to pick up a takeout meal.
Romano also shared the link to a fundraiser for Clancy’s parents, which has now raised over $1 million.
On Thursday, August 20, the author of Teen Vogue articles such as “12 Best Period Swimwear for Teens That Is Both Leakproof and Cute” took a selfie with Clancy’s defense attorney, calling him by an affectionate nickname and joking that she was one of his “favorite media girlies.”
Romano concluded her Instagram post by insisting she has “nothing to apologize for.”
“What I have actually received are messages telling me to slit my wrists, threats to kill me in my sleep, and a resource of ways to kill myself, sent by people who claim they are defending Lindsay’s mental health,” she said. “If you actually believed a woman’s mental health mattered, you would not hand another woman a method, you would not treat suicide as a punishment, and you would not claim to protect one woman’s humanity while stripping another woman of hers.”