An organization that honored the presentation of Associated ‘Nick Ut with his ” Photo of the year “In 1973, for a photo of a girl fleeing a Napalm attack in the Vietnam War, she says she has” suspended her attribution “to UT due to doubts about who really took it.
The World Press Photo report on Friday adds to the confusion about a problem that has divided the photographic community from a film earlier this year, “The Stringer”, questioned the authorship of UT. The photo of a naked and terrified Kim Phuc became an iconic war tragedy symbol.
After two investigations, Associated Press said he found No definitive evidence To guarantee the dispossession of the photographic credit of UT. The AP said it was possible for UT to take the photo, but the passage of time made it impossible to try completely, and that he could not find evidence to prove that no one else did.
PHOTO OF THE WORLD PRESS said his research found That two other photographers, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, the man mentioned in “The Stringer” and Huynh Cong Phuc, “may have been better positioned” to take the shot.
“We conclude that the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo. “At the same time, without conclusive evidence that definitely points to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship.”
World Press Photo, an organization whose awards are considered influential in photography, they will not try to recover the cash prize awarded to UT, a spokeswoman said.
UT lawyer James Hornstein said his client had not spoken with World Press’s photo after an initial contact was released before “The Stringer” was released. “It seems that they had already decided to punish Nick UT from the beginning,” he said.
Gary Knight, producer of “The Stringer”, is a four -time World Press Awards and consultant of the World Press Foundation.
The AP said Friday that its standards “require evidence and certainty to eliminate a loan and we have discovered that it is impossible to demonstrate exactly what happened on the road or in the office (AP) more than 50 years ago.”
“We understand that World Press’s photo has taken different measures based on the same available information, and that is its prerogative,” the statement said. “There is no doubt about the property of AP of the photo.”
Meanwhile, the Pulitzer prize that UT won by the photo seems safe. The Pulitzers depend on the news agencies that enter the awards to determine the authorship, and the administrator Marjorie Miller, a former senior editor of AP, said the study of the AP that shows insufficient evidence to withdraw the credit. “The Board does not anticipate future action at this time,” he said on Friday.
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David Bauder writes about the AP media. Follow it in http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
