A journalist covering the trial of a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children lost her Vanity Fair credentials after a live courtroom camera caught her grinning and winking, and her response only made it worse.
Brittany Romano, a New York City-based freelance journalist, was seated in the courtroom gallery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Monday when a CourtTV camera panned along the press row during the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy. Every other reporter in the frame sat stone-faced. Romano smiled and winked directly into the lens.
By Tuesday, Vanity Fair had revoked her press credentials and told the court she no longer represented the magazine. The publication said it had originally been interested in a personal essay from Romano about growing up with Clancy, but that her conduct crossed a line.
The magazine's statement was brief and pointed. Vanity Fair told the New York Post:
"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 was not seen inside the courtroom on Tuesday. Her name, however, still appeared on a list posted outside the courtroom identifying her as reporting for both New York Magazine and Vanity Fair. Whether New York Magazine took any similar action, or whether Romano retains credentials through that outlet, remains unclear.
Rather than offer a straightforward apology, Romano took to Instagram Stories on Tuesday to mock her critics. In one post, she wrote:
"All for smiling at a camera?! Love it! Tysm for boosting my analytics Xoxoxoxo"
In a second post, she struck a different tone, writing that "these trolls have been absolutely vile." She also said people had sent her messages telling her to kill herself and attacking her personally. No one deserves that kind of abuse. But the whiplash between bragging about her analytics and claiming victimhood did not help her case.
Romano offered an explanation for the smile through TMZ, saying her father had told her she looked sad on live television and that she reacted to that. She also said she was in court because she "grew up" with Clancy. Fox News reported that Romano, who has contributed to outlets including Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Teen Vogue, had previously posted a selfie on social media with Clancy's defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, a detail that raised additional questions about her proximity to trial participants and her ability to cover the case as a credentialed journalist.
Lindsay Clancy, a 36-year-old mother from Duxbury, Massachusetts, is on trial for allegedly strangling her three children to death. She then attempted to take her own life. Her defense team is pursuing a not guilty verdict by reason of insanity, arguing that Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and hearing voices at the time of the killings.
The gravity of the case is not in dispute. At least one prospective juror fled the courtroom in tears before the trial even started. Witness testimony was expected to wrap up as early as Tuesday.
That is the setting in which Romano chose to wink at a camera. A courtroom where a jury is weighing whether a woman murdered her own children. A proceeding so harrowing that members of the public could not sit through jury selection.
Vanity Fair's statement raises a question the magazine did not fully answer: what were the "clear conflicts with editorial standards and processes" that prompted the split? The credential itself was granted so Romano could write a personal essay about growing up with the defendant. That arrangement already blurred the line between journalism and personal narrative. Romano's on-camera conduct, and her social media selfie with the defense attorney, suggest the line was never there to begin with.
Fox News noted that Romano told critics directly: "I was laughing because I grew up with Lindsay." That framing, treating a murder trial as a reunion, captures the problem. A courtroom press credential carries an obligation to the proceedings, to the victims, and to the public watching at home. It is not a front-row seat for someone with a personal connection to the defendant to mug for the livestream.
Vanity Fair acted quickly once the clip went viral, and the magazine deserves credit for pulling the credential rather than defending the indefensible. But the original decision to credential a personal friend of the defendant for a "personal essay" assignment deserves scrutiny of its own. Editorial standards are supposed to prevent conflicts before they play out on a live broadcast, not clean them up afterward.
When a courtroom becomes content, and a murder trial becomes an analytics opportunity, something has gone badly wrong, not just with one reporter, but with the incentives that put her there.
