My friend Iulia is these days in Bangkok, Thailand, as a contestant in the Miss Grand International beauty contest. I am sure she is having plenty of fun there and a wonderful experience and I wish her best of luck in the contest. Note: for those interested, there is also a popular vote (for which one has to “like” a Facebook page and also provide an email address).

Unfortunately, not everything is perfect: the organizers picked a less than ideal picture of her for the presentation and our special shooting came a bit too late, so they used some stuff from Iulia’s Facebook profile. Nothing unusual. Unfortunately, nothing unusual happened when the news hit the Romanian media: Adevarul, a national newspaper, wrote about it. They also used a picture taken from Facebook, this time from a car-themed shooting and, as one can expect from the lame Romanian journalists, they credited the picture to Facebook. Not to the model, not to her employer, not to the contest, not even to the photographer but to Facebook, like it is a stock photography agency. And as a proof of their bad faith, the newspaper cropped-out from the picture a discrete watermark by the photographer. This the level of our press and not the first time I witness it first hand.

Update: …and it worked The newspaper article in Adevarul is now edited with some more appropriate credits and more pictures

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