‘Napalm Girl’ picture

From: Tom Miller via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 9:57 PM
To: Thomas Miller <milltom@gmail.com>
Cc: Borje Ljunggren via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Nick Ut's "Napalm Girl" at 50: Errol Morris Takes…

https://airmail.news/issues/2022-6-4/the-view-from-here

Tom Miller

From: Hiep Duc via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 8:59 PM
To: Hoang Vu <hmv23@cornell.edu>; vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Thanks, Hoang Vu

I just read the AP detailed report on the allegation made in “The Stringer”. Before I read it, I was swayed by the press reviews on the film and that there was a cover up but thanks to a person and the team effort to correct the record, the truth is finally revealed and justice restored. How gullible I was.

With the proliferation of information and misinformation on social media nowadays, and conspiracies abound against the establishment such as government and organisation, it is a reminder to us that we have to hear, seek or read more information from other perspectives before making a judgment.

Hiep Nguyen

EPA, NSW, Australia

From: Margaret B. Bodemer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 10:55 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

HI ALL, 

I agree with Dr. Tai, that it would be interesting to hear from Carl Robinson. I suspect he will or has posted about it on his blog? 

This one photograph isn't the only work that Nick Ut produced, as far as I know. Surely we aren't expected to deny his career and abilities as a photographer based on this wartime story? Like Dr. Tai wrote, the photograph remains an indictment of the cost of war. 

I wonder about the motives of this film Stinger project. I showed a documentary about Nick Ut to my students a couple of years ago that was well received, as he also became someone who left VN and built a new life in the U.S. I remember he talked about having to learn the rules of baseball to cover the LA Dodgers. 

I have also shown the documentary Vietnam's Unseen War which profiles Tim Page BUT ALSO focuses on the Viet photogs (I think all were from the DRV) and what they did as well, which illustrates very well the different conditions they all had to work under. 

So my thoughts are that I am always wary when someone shows up out of the blue to accuse someone in the public eye of wrongdoing. Maybe there are some politics at play. 

Best, 

MBB

Dr. Maggie Bodemer 

Lecturer, History & Asian Studies

Winter 2025 Office hours: MW 10-12 or by Appt.

Co-advisor, Phi Alpha Theta Cal Poly SLO Chapter

Co-leader, Cal Poly Global Program in Japan and Korea (Link)

From: Tom Fox via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 10:05 AM
To: Hoang Vu <hmv23@cornell.edu>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Dear colleagues, 

Allow me.

I played a minor role in the making of "The Stringer," as I searched for - and found - Kim Phuc with her parents in a burn ward in a Saigon hospital a day or two following the incident. I did this at the request of Carl Robinson. That morning, I met him at the AP office, where no one knew where Kim Phuc was. So, with the ability to speak Vietnamese, we set out on motorbikes: Carl, an AP photographer (not Nick Ut), and I took off on motorbikes to search the Saigon hospitals.  It was in the first or second hospital that, after asking questions of the staff, I went to a burn ward room where I found her wrapped in bandages and under a mosquito tent. 

 As I had not seen the (what would become famous) photo and had no idea of the reaction it was causing worldwide, when Carl asked me for help, I was happy to cooperate.  The tragic incident was just one more unfolding story in the tragic war. 

 Years later, Carl told me he had changed the attribution for the film at the photo desk. I then wondered how this could be, considering Nick Ut's unfolding account of his care for Kim Phuc,  that the AP staff didn't know where Kim Phuc was at the time.

After Carl first told me what he had done, I encouraged him to speak up. In half a dozen phone conversations and email exchanges, he came across as tormented, caught between the dreadful potential consequences of telling the truth and letting it slide, choosing an easier path, but one that would never wash away the deep stain of his conscience.  He mentioned at the time that few would believe him and that he didn't have the strength to take on powerful interests. Most importantly, he said that his wife, Kim Dung, advised him to "let it ride." 

 I have been the Editor and Publisher at the National Catholic Reporter for many years, but this morning, for the first time, considering the documentary, which I have seen and believe to be well done and well documented, I published my account. I believe Carl. I admire the filmmakers' effort to bring attention to "The Stringer," who took the picture and has lived without credit—outside his family circle—for all these years. Good journalism is nothing if it does not aim to be as truthful as possible.

I find no heroes here, and there are many victims, including Carl and Nick, who were both young, somewhat vulnerable, in need of employment, seeking to remain employed and get ahead.  It does not seem to be jealousy, that some have said, that moved Carl to speak. Indeed, maybe it was fate, as many Vietnamese might say, that forced him after being approached by French journalists.

 Oh, yes, Nick went along with the fame thrust upon him at age 22. On that fateful day, he had no way of knowing that his admission to an eventual sticky and consequential untruth would forever change his life. 

I wonder how many of us might have done the same at that age.

Tom Fox

https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/whats-wrong-one-more-lie-tangled-hurt-pulitzer-winning-photo

Tom Fox

From: Hue-Tam Tai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 10:04 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu; hmv23@cornell.edu
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

From reading the texts of various interviews, it would seem that Horst Faas wanted one of his team to be credited for the sake of AP's prestige, instead of an unaffiliated stringer. In this, he overruled Carl Robinson (another AP reporter) who claims to have known the indentity of the actual photographer.
I have not seen the documentary, but I hope it raises various questions. From the articles I have read, Carl Robinson alleges that Nick Ut was not in a position to photograph the scene.  If so, where was Ut at that crucial moment. Ut earned the gratitude of Kim Phuc by taking her to a hospital; so Ut must have been at least close to her as she was running. I am agnostic about the question of authorship in this particular case, though as a scholar, I think accurate crediting is important. I, for one, was dismayed by the Claudine Gay case.
As to why make a documentary so long after the event? How about books, articles, documentaries about the Tulsa massacre? Are they devoid of value?

Hue-Tam

From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 9:08 AM
To: Hoang Vu <hmv23@cornell.edu>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Dear all, 

I too share this sense of perplexity over the rush to push a new narrative over the photographer of an iconic picture. I think the end result of this will be a "he said, he said" kind of story in which two persons are hurt. Does this mean I think we should accept falsehoods? Obviously not!  But it is crystal clear, from extensive research, that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.  I myself saw this when serving on jury for a trial in the United States for murder. And in that trial, the case was less that a year old! The case of identifying the photographer is decades old. Horst Faas, who is supposed to have been at the center of this switcheroo, is dead. For some reason, we are supposed to believe that the person who actually took the picture has been mute for decades and never spoke up. Could be. But why, for God's sake, make a movie on the basis of such slim and contradictory evidence?  

Shawn McHale 

From: Hoang Vu via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2025 8:17 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Dear list,

I attach here a detailed report which the Associated Press has produced earlier this month to address the allegations made in “The Stringer”, after which they concluded there is insufficient evidence to dispute the photograph’s authorship. The Guardian has also published what I consider a balanced coverage of the controversy.

In March 2024, Artist-in-Residence Tony Bui and I co-organized a conference at Columbia University on the Legacies of the Vietnam War that, among other activities, gathered many surviving eyewitnesses of that day, including Nick Ut, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, David Burnett, and Fox Butterfield, to discuss in minute details the events of the day of the photograph. Our conference heard many reliable and convincing testimonies from these eyewitnesses of Nick Ut’s key role as a photographer who documented this instance of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force’s accidental yet disastrous use of napalm on civilians, and also as the person who Kim Phuc firmly credits to be her rescuer.

Nick Huynh Cong Ut had risen from darkroom assistant to be a field photographer with AP, and was the first Vietnamese photographer to be recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board for his role documenting the universal horrors of the war, taking great personal risks to be close to the action and help civilian victims of wartime violence. I am utterly perplexed at how attacking this Vietnamese photographer’s legacy is somehow recast here as an attempt to highlight Vietnamese war reporters’ agency. I look forward to seeing how Carl Robinson went about refuting these eyewitness testimonies in the documentary. I hope that this time around, he could produce a more rigorous body of evidence than he did some months ago, when he circulated aspersions on this listserv about USAID’s alleged regime change agenda in Vietnam that so gravely and erroneously damaged the reputation of Fulbright University Vietnam.

Happy new year of the Snake!

Hoang Minh Vu

Vietnamese New Hack

Fulbright University Vietnam

From: Michael Dedrick via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2025 2:44 PM
To: Vsg@mailman11.u.washington.edu <Vsg@uw.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Nick Ut picture

Interesting Guardian article re provenance of "Napalm Girl" photo. If the challenge to the photo stands up you have to wonder why Ut claimed the picture when he knew otherwise. Ut was a AP photographer so it is no wonder that they stand by the provenance of Ut. The other thing is that there were many Vietnamese photographers on the ground in Vietnam, as stringers/freelance or working for western news, mostly unrecognized.

The NLF/PAVN forces also had combat photographers, who are rarely acknowledged as photojournalists, partly because of casualties and incomplete/lost records.

I had to contact the DRV photo archives to get permission to use a shot of a NLF ammo bearer to use as a cover picture for my book Southern Voices Biet Dong and the National Front, University Kentucky Press 2022. They gave a name, correcting an initial submission. They were alas, unable to put a name to the young woman soldier.

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới

Michael Dedrick

From: Hue-Tam Tai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 5:24 PM
To: niklainez@gmail.com; vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

The person who made the allegation is Carl Robinson of Vietnam Old Hacks. Robinson occasionally posts on VSG. It would be good to have his perspective directly from him. Incidentally, he, like Nick Ut, worked for AP.
The issue of authorship notwithstanding, the photgraph's authenticity is unquestioned and remains a searing indictment of the cost of war.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita

From: Nicolas Lainez via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 4:33 PM
To: Carlyle Thayer via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Dear colleagues, 

The documentary film The Stringer is currently making headlines. Below is an email from the VII Foundation, sent by executive director Gary Knight, who initiated the investigation. At the bottom, you will find a list of film reviews and news clips. I am curious about what will come next regarding the authorship of the most iconic photo of the war.

Best wishes, 

Nicolas Lainez

Institut de recherche pour le développement

HCMC

From: Dan via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 2:30 PM
To: Vuong Vu-Duc <vuduc.vuong@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

AP has conducted its own investigation and stands by Nick Ut:

AP investigation into photographer credit of  "napalm girl" photo: https://www.ap.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AP-Terror-of-War-report.pdf

Dan
Daniel Tsang
Librarian Emeritus
University of California, Irvine

From: Vuong Vu-Duc via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 1:49 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Potentially a bombshell

Friends & colleagues,

Ran across this review in the Guardian and thought that many among us would be curious (again) about the impact of this iconic photograph in changing the public opinion about the war in Viet Nam.

And Chúc Mừng Năm Mới - Year Ất Tỵ (snake)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/26/the-stringer-documentary-napalm-girl-photo

‘Uncomfortable truths’: controversial film challenges authorship of famous photo

The Stringer, which premiered at Sundance, alleges that an incorrect credit was given for iconic ‘Napalm Girl’ picture

Adrian Horton in Park City, Utah

Sun 26 Jan 2025                 16.20 EST

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Vũ-Đức Vượng

Editor,  TRỒNG  NGƯỜI

A Clearinghouse on Educ. in Viet Nam
San Francisco - Sai Gon