Vanity Fair just discovered editorial standards.
After a video of freelancer Brittany Romano smiling, posing, and winking at a Court TV camera inside the Lindsay Clancy murder trial exploded across social media, the leftist magazine dumped her “personal essay” and told the court she is no longer credentialed by the magazine.
Three children are dead. Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Baby Callan was 8 months old. Their mother is on trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, accused of strangling them with exercise bands in the basement of the family home on January 24, 2023, after she sent her husband out for takeout. The defense says postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors say she planned it. The jury will hear closings Thursday.
And there sat Romano in the front row of the gallery Monday, in a green dress, mugging for the lens like she was at a cocktail party instead of a triple-murder trial. Other reporters sat stone-faced. She grinned. She tilted her head. She winked. America saw it.
WATCH:
Vanity Fair drops journalist Brittany Romano after video of her smiling, posing and winking at a courtroom camera during the Lindsay Clancy murder trial explodes across social media.
The magazine says Romano was credentialed to write a personal essay about growing up with… pic.twitter.com/fT0AfXaUxE
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 26, 2026
Romano was attending the trial using Vanity Fair media credentials. The magazine said it had been considering publishing a personal essay from Romano about her experience growing up with Clancy in Connecticut.
However, after the video went viral, Vanity Fair abruptly pulled the plug.
“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.”
Read that again. Vanity Fair’s original pitch was not hard news. It was a first-person essay from a woman who says she grew up on the same Wallingford, Connecticut street as Lindsay Musgrove Clancy, the same woman who admits she killed her three children.
A New York magazine wanted the childhood-friend angle on a mother who wrapped resistance bands around the necks of a kindergartner, a toddler, and an infant. Then the camera caught the friend performing. Then they ran.
When a streamer asked her outside court why she was smiling on a live feed of a baby-killing trial, Romano said she “grew up with Lindsay,” that Clancy looked at her and she looked back, and that her father had told her she “looked bad” on Court TV, so she was giggling.
She later added that Hillary Duff’s stylist told her to clip her hair back, look forward, and smile. In another telling, it was mascara in her eye. The explanations keep multiplying. The video does not.
1) Did she have a liquid lunch and then go to court?
2) Her dad was like hey I saw you at the murder trial, why weren’t you smiling? pic.twitter.com/mvMMnXMtF1— Jay (@jaybronious) August 25, 2026
After the clip went nuclear, Romano posted screenshots of angry messages and wrote: “All for smiling at a camera?! Love it! Tysm for boosting my analytics Xoxoxoxo.”
In a longer statement she declared, “A smile is not a crime. Telling a woman to slit her wrists is.” She said she smiles through anxiety, smiles when she is uncomfortable, and has “nothing to apologize for.”
She also insisted she is a freelancer, never had a contract, and that Vanity Fair cannot “pull credentials” from someone who is not staff. The magazine notified the court anyway. She was gone Tuesday.
The ‘reporter’ Brittany Romano who was grinning and giggling in the Lindsay Clancy courtroom had a total meltdown on Instagram last night
She tried to delete this https://t.co/tgTq4wdAAu pic.twitter.com/kOOjvN7kJj
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) August 25, 2026
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