The woman at the center of a viral video who was seen winking and smiling at a camera during the Lindsay Clancy trial this week has been dropped by the magazine she was credentialed to cover the trial for.
Journalist Brittany Romano was smiling and winking at a pool camera for the trial’s live feed on Monday, and the clip itself has generated millions of views across social media platforms and various news articles.
Why was Romano at the trial to begin with? Vanity Fair confirmed she was credentialed to cover the trial and her personal connection to Clancy.
JOURNALIST GOES VIRAL FOR GRINNING, WINKING ON CAMERA DURING LINDSAY CLANCY COURTROOM PROCEEDINGS
In a statement sent to Fox News, Vanity Fair said, “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.”
Romano spoke directly with Fox News Digital and says she “never had a contract” with Vanity Fair and she worked as a freelance journalist assigned for this specific project.
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In a lengthy statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Romano wrote in part:
“A smile is not a crime. Telling a woman to slit her wrists is.
“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.”
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She went on to say, “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.”
At the end of the post, Romano wrote, “I have been told, repeatedly, to take accountability and apologize, when I have 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.
“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.”
