WHAT WENT DOWN WITH VICE // Broadly - How I had to fight to get credit for a project that I made.
Thanks to everyone who has shown support and reposted about my experience with Broadly.
This whole fiasco has been daunting. Dealing with the women who run Broadly - Shanon Kelley and Tracie Morrissey is very similar to dealing with a high school mean girl clique.
Here is how everything went down.
I emailed Hannah Gregg (woman who took all the credit) and told her exactly how I felt. I expressed to her everything that I did in my post that you read. She called me back and left me a voicemail telling me that she was sorry and took 100% blame. She said that she knew that they had fucked up and basically agreed that Broadly is a vulture. She then sent me a text, explaining that she was trying to get the credits changed. Apparently she spent the whole day trying to get them changed but Braodly claimed that they could not change anything once it had been published. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to change the credits because that would involce taking the piece off of youtube.com. Which means they would loose their 30,000 views.
After posting this to my instagram the other creator of Broadly - Tracie Morrissey tried to publicly shame and bully me. Tracie Morrissey left a comment under my post exclaiming that I never worked on the project and that it wasn’t mine. I’ve attached a screen shot of what she said to me, she ended up deleting the comment yesterday. The part that she mentions about me not watching the “rough cut” is infuriating. I had been emailing them for weeks asking for dailies / paper edits. I never got a response. Then last week I told Hannah Gregg that I would be in the mountains and wouldn’t have access to wifi / cell service. While I was in the mountains she sent me an email. The email stated that this was a “rough cut” and she wanted to get my input. Less than 24 hours later this “rough cut” was published on Broadly’s site. I never had time to look at the “rough cut” because I didn’t have wifi access. Hannah Gregg knew this.
Yesterday a friend of mine named Nate tweeted about my situation. He posted a link to my tumblr post. He is also a famous musician and has 250k followers. Shanon, one of the 2 creators of Broadly got wind of this and called him on the phone!!!! At this point I hadn’t even gotten a phone call from Broadly. Nate let her speak first and she told him that it wasn’t my project and that I never worked on it. She also told him that I was crazy and that she thought that I just wanted a credit. After that he explained to her that he has actually known me since we were teens and is fully aware of the fact that I have been working on the project for 2 years. He refused to take the post down. He also told her that she should just try talking to me.
After Nate told them to call me I began getting phone calls from Broadly, both Shanon and Tracie texted me asking me to talk on the phone. I expressed to them that I needed them to email me because I didn’t want any more confusion or miscommunication to ensue. They tried to bully me in to talking on the phone and made excuses about why they couldn’t email. A few minutes after all of this I received an email from someone named Sarah Rodriguez and it basically said that there was a huge miscommunication and that they were going to change the credits and give me the proper credit that I deserve.
The most frustrating thing about this is that they really treated me and the caramel curves pretty badly. Unfortunately a credit is not what I want. I want them to kill the piece completely. I don’t want to have my name linked to Broadly and I want to spread the word about how exploitative this company is.
Broadly just released another shot doc about the last lesbian bars in America. This was Mary Emily O'Hara’s project, it too was stolen from her except they didn’t give her any credit at all. She actually worked at Broadly for
for 5 months, pitched the idea and did all of the work for this project. Shanon and Tracie bullied her while she
worked at Broadly and eventually ended up firing her for no good reason. After she was fired she told Shanon and Tracie that they
did not have the right to make her film. Mary sent them emails over a course of a few months and nobody responded. The doc
eventually got made and was published on the site. There is no mention of Mary’s name anywhere. The two of us have
joined forces and plan on trying to get this story published somewhere. It’s really disheartening that Broadly poses as a place for
women to feel safe and creative. In reality they are immature bullies who exploit and shame women publicly. I don’t think they
should be able to get away with this.
Today another journalist called me and said that another project that Broadly is going to release about abortion is also someone else project and that they too did not get credited.
Please help spread the word that Broadly is a sham.
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