EliteDaily Misuses Photo for Viral Article, Writer Then Responds to Complaints with Ridicule

It seems that the viral content blog EliteDaily hasn’t learned its lesson despite the current copyright infringement lawsuit being brought by photojournalist Peter Menzel. Another photo has been misused for a viral article, and photographers aren’t happy with how the writer is responding.

The controversy started last week when staff writer Gigi Engle published a post titled “Dear Anxiety: Instead Of Being Toxic, You Turned Me Into A Stronger Person.” The piece has since attracted over 11,000 likes on Facebook.

At the top of the story was a photo of a woman named Claudia by Brooklyn-based photographer Sam Fan. The problem is, neither Fan nor his subject were asked whether the photo could be published and used as the “face of anxiety.”

Photographers began to speak out against the website and Engle on Twitter:

@EliteDaily @GigiEngle Using a photographers image without permission OR proper credit is NOT ok. Please amend this in your anxiety article

— Scott Borrero (@ScottBorrero) April 20, 2015

Apparently @EliteDaily doesn’t care much for artists, and neither do their “writers” @GigiEngle

— Rebecca Rae Barton (@rebeccarae) April 21, 2015

Engle responded to some of the messages saying that the photo isn’t her responsibility, but the EliteDaily photo department’s:

Those initial responses have since been deleted by Engle. As photographers continued to question her about the photo usage, Engle began responding with blocks and ridicule:

On the other hand, Fan is still waiting to hear back:

Thanks @OmarZRobles @senenllanos @ScottBorrero I’ve been trying to contact @GigiEngle since last week but never respond smh

— samalive (@samnotalive) April 21, 2015

As of the time of this post, the photo is still being used on the viral post, albeit with a credit link to Fan’s Tumblr website, where the image was presumably found by EliteDaily.