Tiffany Mitchell was criticized for sharing photos of her motorcycle accident to Instagram after ... [+]
In August, BuzzFeed writer Tanya Chen featured a story about an Instagram influencer who raised questions of faking a motorcycle accident while possibly promoting a sponsorship with Smartwater.
Commenters on the original, two-week-old post deemed the dramatic, strikingly beautiful photos to be fake and Chen investigated the commentary by interviewing the influencer, Tiffany Mitchell, who identifies herself as a photographer. Chen originally published the story, in which she called the incident a “photo shoot,” before hearing back from the police on an accident report or Smartwater as to whether there was a partnership with Mitchell. A day later, BuzzFeed updated the story with confirmation from Smartwater that Mitchell does not have a partnership with her.
On Wednesday, Mitchell and her lawyer, Jon Pfeiffer with California-based law firm Pfeiffer Law Corp, issued a letter of retraction to BuzzFeed for the story stating the use of “photo shoot” in the headline and throughout the body as inaccurate and defamatory.
“Tiffany has processed trauma in her life by sharing her story with the Instagram community for years,” the letter partially reads. “Tiffany herself has talked about her miscarriage, the demise of her marriage and the death of a boyfriend in a motorcycle accident. Opening up about her accident was no different than the other topics she has shared about the past.”
"Ms. Mitchell's claims are baseless and without merit, and we stand fully behind Tanya's reporting," Matt Mittenthal, spokesperson for BuzzFeed News, told me via email.
After obtaining the police report of the accident, confirmation from the Williamson County Sheriff's Office of the report, and the emergency responder's medical report, there is proof of the motorcycle accident occurring past the photos and videos Mitchell shared. The reports state Mitchell was injured with "an abrasion to the left shoulder” after losing control of her bike “going about 25 mph” on a curve.
Tiffany Mitchell was criticized for sharing photos of her motorcycle accident to Instagram after ... [+]
“I was devastated. I felt sad, misunderstood, confused,” Mitchell told me in an email. “The community I’ve been a part of on Instagram has always been filled with kind and supportive people. We’re all wanting to practice vulnerability together so we can grow as humans and celebrate each other’s lives, encouraging through the bad and cheering through the good. [Since the accident] I’ve just tried to continue sharing normally, not referencing the whole thing anymore and fueling that fire. I’m still getting hate messages but a friend is helping me monitor them.”
As Mitchell’s controversy broke online, several broader questions of the influencer culture were sparked by the news of this story, including:
- Have we been bombarded by advertisements so much that a water bottle in a photo is interpreted as product placement?
- Has the influencer culture reached a point of dishonesty due to past lies and busted hoaxes that vulnerability can't be trusted?
- Does this signal the death of Instagrammers?
“I think that transparency is the key and always has been,” Jason Falls, the director of digital marketing at Cornett, told me. He has previously worked with Mitchell but wasn’t aware of her identity until after our interview.
“I think the reason that this has evolved is because influencers have gotten carried away,” he told me. “Fifteen years ago, the people that we paid attention to in the media were trained journalists. Now, the people who have the public’s attention are just random people who don’t necessarily have any understanding of the responsibility that they have in creating audiences of people and holding their attention.”
Falls went on to say there’s currently a lack of sophistication, business savvy, and education some Instagrammers don’t have, though he only believes it’s about 5 percent of influencers with more than 150,000 followers who are doing “borderline unethical” things.
The Federal Trade Commission requires Instagram users posting ads to clearly disclose the brand relationship with their followers, which is typically shown as #ad or #sponsored in the caption. Though, this doesn’t always happen.
“Overall, I’m welcoming all of these controversies because it’s going to clean up the poor practices by those few influencers that are ruining it for everybody else,” Falls told me.
