A new documentary purports that a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photographer did not take a picture that became a hallmark image from the Vietnam War.
The photo’s subject begs to differ.
In a blistering statement, Kim Phuc bashed the filmmakers of The Stringer for an “outrageous and false attack” on Nick Ut, a former AP photographer who captured a 9-year-old Phuc running away in horror after a napalm bomb fell on her South Vietnamese village and left her severely burned. The image quickly circulated around the world, earning her the moniker “Napalm Girl.”
The Stringer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday after a two-year investigation by photojournalist Gary Knight and others, dives into former AP photo editor Carl Robinson’s claim that the historic photo was actually taken by a Vietnamese stringer.
“I have refused to participate in this outrageous and false attack on Nick Ut raised by Mr. Robinson over the past years and never responded to his email requesting that I talk with him. I hope he finds peace in his life,” Phuc wrote in a statement. “I have no memory of those minutes but l would never participate in the Gary Knight film because I know it is false.”
Phuc admitted she does not remember Ut taking the image, owing to the trauma of her burning. But she said her uncle and brother (who was five at the time and is also in the photo) “repeatedly” recounted the day’s events, including how Ut took them to a local hospital to get treated.
“I have no doubt in my mind and heart that it was Nick who ran towards me to capture the famous photo,” she said. “Nick took the image and he deserves the credit he has received. He is a good man who fully deserves to be treated with respect.”
The statement—provided by attorney Jim Hornstein, who is representing Ut against the filmmakers—helps set up a legal battle between Ut and those behind the documentary. The Associated Press said in a statement on Sunday its own six-month investigation, which produced a 22-page report, concluded Ut took the 1972 photograph.
Hornstein told the Daily Beast on Monday he planned to file a defamation lawsuit against the filmmakers and the VII Foundation, which produced the film, to help clear Ut’s name. “We will be seeking to vindicate Nick Ut’s reputation,” Hornstein told the Daily Beast.
Knight, the executive director of the VII Foundation who led the investigation, said in an email that producers “believe Kim Phuc believes Nick Ut took this photo” and “we would never challenge her beliefs.” But he also noted Phuc’s admission that she did not remember the events of that day.
Knight said that Phuc declined to speak to his team despite multiple outreaches. He also said the filmmakers did not question that Phuc’s uncle told her about the day’s events—and that Ut took the photo, but they could not identify her uncle in any of the film footage or photos they had from that day.
“We are open to examining any new images that come to light of course,” he wrote.
Some facts surrounding the image are not in dispute. The film reel containing the photo was taken back to the AP’s Saigon bureau, where Robinson was the photo editor on duty. After seeing the image, Robinson deemed it violated the AP’s editorial standards and chose not to run it. After chief of photos Horst Faas came back from his lunch break and saw the image, he made the decision to run it. The photo was publicly monikered “The Terror of War” and became a hallmark of Ut’s career, winning him a Pulitzer Prize at 22 and cementing him and Faas as photojournalism legends. Faas died in 2012.
What diverges, however, is who took the photo and how its credit was administered. The Stringer contends that Ut could not have taken that particular photo, claiming he was not in the proper position despite taking other photos of Phuc that day. It cites satellite imagery and three-dimensional models to make the case—and the testimony of Nguyen Thanh Nghe, the then-stringer who claimed he took the photo, and Robinson, the photo editor.
Robinson says in the film that he saw multiple images that day: the iconic image of Phuc, which included a stringer’s name, and another one taken by Ut that showed her from the side. “That was actually my pick, because it was discrete,” Robinson says. He initially opted not to run the first photo before being overruled by Faas, who argued the photo’s honest depiction of war overruled the standards.
But when it came time to add a credit to the image, Robinson says, Faas ordered him to add Ut’s name instead of a stringer’s. “Horst Faas, who had been standing right next to me said, ‘Nick Ut. Make it ‘Nick Ut.’ Make it ‘staff.’ Make it Nick Ut,‘” Robinson says in the film.
Robinson says he obliged, a decision he “felt bad” making because he “wasn’t courageous enough” to push back.
Robinson told Vanity Fair he relayed the story in private conversations over the years—including to photojournalist David Burnett, who was at the scene at the time—though never publicly. Burnett told the magazine, however, that he “didn’t give it much credence” and remembered hearing Faas praise Ut for his “good work” in capturing the frame.
“That’s verbatim what he said that day,” Burnett said. “We all heard it.”
Robinson also told Vanity Fair he shared his secret to AP correspondent Peter Arnett, claiming he didn’t want to make the accusation while Faas was alive to spare him embarrassment. But Arnett, after contacting people like then-photo darkroom editor Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki and ex-bureau chief Richard Pyle, also found the claim meritless and wondered if Robinson was acting on a vendetta over Ut’s success and his own firing from the AP in 1978. (Knight said Arnett did not respond to his team’s requests for comment.)
“I don’t fully understand why Carl Robinson launched his failing attempts to discredit two of the great photographers of our time, Horst Faas and Nick Ut,” he told the AP, according to its report. “But maybe it is jealousy.”
Pyle, a close friend of Robinson, also cast doubt on the claim. In an email he sent to Arnett in 2015, parts of which were shared by Hornstein with the Daily Beast, Pyle characterized the claim as “strangely reckless story spreading” and he told Robinson the claims had “no plausible merit.”
Instead, Pyle pondered, Robinson “for his own mysterious reasons, seems bent on his personal crusade.” Pyle died in 2017.
Knight said his team was aware that Pyle and Arnett did not believe Robinson’s account and did not take any witnesses' statement at face value.
“Which is why we interviewed 55 people, read hundreds of pages of testimonies, watched hours of video footage, examined hundreds of photographs, and engaged one of the worlds leading forensic investigation teams to analyse the evidence,” he wrote.
Hornstein, Ut’s lawyer, said he has brought in another lawyer to file the defamation suit against the filmmakers, but he would not disclose their name. Knight said he welcomed Hornstein’s outreach.
“It stretches credulity to believe the one man who can testify to this is Carl Robinson and everyone else is totally oblivious to it or dead,” Hornstein said.
