Who really took the Napalm Girl photo? New doc explores alleged AP coverup of real photographer of Vietnams most horrifying image

It is one of the most visceral war photographs of all time: A naked, crying 9-year-old girl, her arms outstretched and her face contorted with pain in the aftermath of a napalm attack.Behind her loom soldiers, while she is surrounded by the wailing faces of four other fleeing children, the entire sky behind them blotted out by thick black smoke.It’s hailed as the most famous image of the Vietnam conflict and won a Pulitzer Prize following publication in 1972 for photographer “Nick” Huynh Cong Ut.But a documentary now claims the Associated Press has been deceived about who took the frame for over 50 years.Adding fuel to the movie’s theories, it was nominated for four News & Documentary Emmy Awards, including “Outstanding Investigative Documentary,” this year.There is no question Ut was on the scene and shooting pictures of the girl in question, later revealed to be named Phan Thị Kim Phúc, now 63.But Netflix documentary “The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo” alleges it was actually a freelance photographer named Nguyễn Thành Nghe who took the famed photo, and he was paid just $20 as a “stringer” by the agency for submitting his pictures.The documentary claims Horst Faas, the AP’s photo director in Saigon, recognized the photo’s iconic potential and insisted it be falsely credited to Ut, so the agency and their staff photographer would take all the credit.The photo, officially called “Terror of War,” was taken around seven years after US ground troops started fighting in the war on June 8, 1972.South Vietnamese soldiers had napalmed the village of Trảng Bàng, thinking North Vietnamese troops were hiding in it, but instead hit civilians on their own side.Phúc was fleeing, her back burning from the after-effects of the chemical bombing.Underscoring the frame’s impact, a voiceover in “The Stringer” states, “It was such a shocking image that it has seared itself into the collective consciousness of the American peopl...