But many newspapers abstained, perhaps because it depicted frontal nudity. daily newspapers did publish the photograph. Ubiquitous? Not exactlyĪnother myth is that “Napalm Girl” appeared on newspaper front pages everywhere in America. In short, public opinion turned against the war long before “Napalm Girl” entered popular consciousness. When the question was first asked in summer 1965, only 24% of respondents said yes, sending in troops had been a mistake.īut by mid-May 1971 – more than a year before “Napalm Girl” was made – 61% of respondents said yes, sending troops had been mistaken policy. The question – essentially a proxy for Americans’ views about Vietnam – was whether sending U.S. The end came in April 1975, when communist forces overran South Vietnam and seized its capital.Īmericans’ views about the war had turned negative long before June 1972, as measured by a survey question the Gallup Organization posed periodically. combat forces were out of Vietnam by the time Ut took the photograph, the war went on for nearly three more years. public opinion against the conflict.Īlthough most U.S. These myths claim that the photograph hastened an end to the war and that it turned U.S. Two other related media myths rest on assumptions that “Napalm Girl” was so powerful that it must have exerted powerful effects on its audiences.
VIETNAM THE REAL WAR ARCHIVE
New York Times archive Hastened the war’s end? The New York Times headline of June 9, 1972, clearly reported it was a South Vietnamese attack that sprayed napalm on troops and civilians. McGovern’s metaphoric claim anticipated similar assertions, including Susan Sontag’s statement in her 1973 book “On Photography,” that Kim Phuc had been “sprayed by American napalm.” The napalm that badly burned Kim Phuc, he declared, had been “dropped in the name of America.” The myth of American culpability at Trang Bang began taking hold during the 1972 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate George McGovern referred to the photograph in a televised speech. The headline over The New York Times’ report from Trang Bang said: “South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops.” The Chicago Tribune front page of June 9, 1972, stated the “napalm dropped by a Vietnamese air force Skyraider diving onto the wrong target.” Christopher Wain, a veteran British journalist, wrote in a dispatch for United Press International: “These were South Vietnamese planes dropping napalm on South Vietnamese peasants and troops.” The napalm attack was carried out by propeller-driven Skyraider aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force trying to roust communist forces dug in near the village – as news accounts at the time made clear. Prominent among the myths of the “Napalm Girl,” which I address and dismantle in my book “ Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism,” is that U.S.-piloted or guided warplanes dropped the napalm, a gelatinous, incendiary substance, at Trang Bang. The distorting effects of four media myths have become attached to the photograph, which Ut made when he was a 21-year-old photographer for The Associated Press. These are well-known stories about or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated. AP photo Widely believed – often exaggerated After taking the photograph of her fleeing in agony in 1972, Ut transported her to a hospital. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, left, is visited by AP photographer Nick Ut in 1973.
VIETNAM THE REAL WAR FREE
Facebook retracted the decision amid an international uproar about the social network’s free speech policies. She had torn away her burning clothes as she and other terrified children ran from their village, Trang Bang, on June 8, 1972. In 2016, Facebook stirred controversy by deleting “Napalm Girl” from a commentary posted at the network because the photograph shows the then-9-year-old Kim Phuc entirely naked. In May 2022, for example, Nick Ut, the photographer who captured the image, and the photo’s central figure, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, made news at the Vatican as they presented a poster-size reproduction of the prize-winning image to Pope Francis, who has emphasized the evils of warfare. It is one of those exceptional visual artifacts that draws attention and even controversy years after it was made. The “Napalm Girl” photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children fleeing an errant aerial attack on their village, taken 50 years ago this month, has rightly been called “ a picture that doesn’t rest.”
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