answering all the messages on WhatsApp from the previous day because at 9 p.m. There is one with her photo and text above it that reads, "On Instagram seeing what you all did last night." Or there is also, "Me at 7 a.m. It's perhaps the only aspect of this that has always amused me. The image has shown up on dozens of websites from several Latin American countries and Spain.
It was even published on the official website of the Mexican government, the Consortium of State Universities of Chile and a nursing home in Costa Rica. I found the picture in more than 50 news outlets from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Spain and even Switzerland without the proper credit to Battiste or El Observador, as if it were a stock image. She has appeared on online betting sites, misinformation pages and also in the media. What I do remember, however, is the anger and guilt I felt.Īlmost 10 years have passed since the photo was published and it continues to circulate today. Unlike her, I don't really remember how or when I found out that her photo had been stolen and was circulating in ways that had nothing to do with the original report. "I went to the club, to the pool, and one of the girls told me: 'You're on YouTube and they say you make $1,000 a day.' I wish it were true, but it's not," she said. Bia becomes everyone's grandmotherĪbout eight to 10 months after the story was published, something very strange happened to my grandmother.
But, what started out as a cool photoshoot, turned into something neither of us could have ever imagined. Photojournalist Diego Battiste also went, and the day the story was published, one of his pictures got featured on the front page. And I had the perfect interviewee: Bia.Ī few days later, I took two journalists to her house. Since Vázquez had put technology at the top of the electoral agenda, we obviously had to do a report on the use of tablets in senior citizens.
At that time I worked at the Uruguayan newspaper El Observador, and was the creator and editor of Cromo, the first and then only media outlet focused on science and technology in the country.