Alisha’s in the newspaper!!

I got a huge surprise yesterday when the husband called me up early in the morning at work and excited told me to look for the Utusan newspaper. His friend called him up and said that he thinks Alisha is in the newspaper *gasp* !!

So I went to the CEO’s secretary, borrowed the day’s Utusan and ran back to my table. I didn’t know why but I went straight for the MEGA-pullout, flipped the pages open and VOILA! There she was, my little girl in her car seat flashing her cheeky grin! I was like “Oh my god!! It IS Alisha!!”

I quickly rang up the husband to confirm and we were quite perplexed as to how our baby’s picture ended up in the newspaper! I mean, how could they just simply use someone’s kid’s picture to accompany their articles without asking for permission? I figured that they must have taken it from my blog post on Alisha’s car seat. It was the only place I used the picture, and heck, I took the picture with my hand phone! I still have it in my hand phone for God’s sake, lol!

The husband straight away went into his “I-am-taking-legal-action” mode and sounded clearly upset that people used our daughter’s picture without permission. I told him to call Utusan and ask for an explanation and excuse given was clearly a feeble attempt to cover their mistake.

He said he spoke to a lady who was the column’s writer. He introduced himself as father of the child who’s picture she used to accompany her article. She immediately went into shock mode and said that she didn’t know that the picture was a Malaysian baby. “Saya ingat anak mat salleh!!”

I laughed out loud when the husband was telling me this. With eyes as small as the Japanese kid next door, how in the world did she mistaken our baby as a Caucasian is beyond me. Apparently, she simply Googled for ‘baby in car seat’ and took the picture from there. My colleague, upon hearing this, Googled several combinations (baby in car seat, baby car seat, car seat, baby dalam car seat) and none of them resulted with Alisha’s picture. Only if you Google up ‘Alisha car seat’ will her picture appear and of course, it was from my blog.

It didn’t end there. The columnist got all apologetic and repeatedly said sorry and that our baby was so cute and all that jazz. My husband asked if we will be getting any compensation out of this, and she apologized again saying that she can’t give out any monetary compensation. She rambled on about how cute our baby is then asked the husband if she could feature our family as part of her next article on baby care. I’m not sure if the husband took her words seriously but he told her that he’ll discuss it with his wife.

Did you notice what happened here? She weasled her way out of trouble by using flattery. Tsk tsk tsk. To be honest, I’m not really upset that Alisha’s picture was in the papers. In fact, I’m completely flattered and proud 😀 It was accompanying a good article on travelling with a baby and the safe use of a car seat so I didn’t see the harm. I am slightly disturbed though that they took and used the picture of a minor without parental consent. This being Utusan Malaysia, one of our country’s top written media source. If they can do something as unethical as this, God knows what the other small time media are capable of. I think I’m going to email them to just convey my feelings about this. I’ll let you Doodlers know if I get a reply.

On the bright side though, my baby’s got her first media feature!! Hahahahhahhahaha!! Mak bapak dia pun tak pernah masuk surat khabar gambar besar camnih!!

We’re going to laminate a few copies for safekeeping, and give it to her when she’s older 🙂

Baby girl, you’re accidentally famous!

Note : The scanned article above is courtesy of Doodler Husna, thanks Husna!!