Sep 12, 2016

Censoring American War Crimes

After years of hating the iconic photo, Kim Phuc came to embrace it as a powerful tool to teach peace.
By Abby Zimet / commondreams.org
Censoring American War Crimes

Facebook has backed down amidst outraged charges of censorship after deleting the iconic photo of a naked burned Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Demonstrating questionable journalistic standards now being increasingly challenged, the social network deleted the harrowing, Pulitzer Prize-winning image by AP photographer Nick Ut - which shows nine-year-old Kim Phuc running screaming from her village of Trang Bang after she was severely burned by napalm dropped by South Vietnamese planes on June 8, 1972 - in the name of "maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community."

Phuc survived. Despite years of ongoing pain and surgeries related to her burns, she now lives in Canada, runs a foundation dedicated to help other child victims of war, and sometimes speaks about the powerful impact of one of the most famous war photographs of all time taken by the Vietnamese, then-21-year-old Ut. The recent uproar came after Norwegian author Tom Egeland included it in a Facebook post about photos that changed the history of wars, and in this case perhaps helped end one. Facebook removed the picture, Egeland protested, Facebook banned him and then proceeded to remove the image several more times when it was defiantly re-posted by other high-profile Norwegians - including Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who charged, "If you edit past events or people, you change history, and you change reality."

That, critics say, is exactly what Facebook is increasingly doing in the name of common rules for all. Many have blasted the social network's random censorship moves - most famously, banning photos of breastfeeding or post-mastectomy women - as the inevitable result of using murky algorithms, not sentient journalists, to make editorial decisions. Notes one critic, “If they are in the news business, which they are, then they have to get into the world of editorial judgement.” In the case of Ut's famous photo, critics cited their ludicrous inability to figure out that the nude child in the photo is not what's obscene or pornographic; the war and its atrocities are. One critic mused the call was probably made by a 22-year-old with "no fucking idea about the importance of the picture.” Said another, “It’s almost like these are kids playing with a toy above their age bracket” - and their historic understanding.

Facebook finally relented and re-posted the image after a lengthy, fiery, much-read open letter to Mark Zuckerberg by Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief and CEO of Norway's largest paper Aftenposten. Hansen blasted "the world's most powerful editor" with abusing its power and attacking "freedom of expression - and therefore democracy." Citing the very real historical implications of the debate, he wrote, "Mark, please try to envision a new war where children will be the victims of barrel bombs or nerve gas. Would you once again intercept the documentation of cruelties, just because a tiny minority might possibly be offended by images of naked children?" In the end, he notes, the ever-cogent George Orwell said it best. "If liberty means anything at all," he wrote in his preface to Animal Farm, "it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

Norway's Prime Minister imagines a future of censorship

Media   Media & War   War & Peace
Rate this article 
Media
Trending Videos
Louis Theroux: The Settlers (2025)
62 min - Fourteen years after his first visit and 2011 film The Ultra Zionists, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the West Bank.Louis...
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)
174 min - Adam Curtis directs this 3-part series about how humans have been colonised by the machines we have built.The series begins by unraveling the surprising influence of Ayn Rand's objectivist...
Jon Stewart on Israel’s "Urgent" Iran Strike, Minnesota Murders & MAGA’s Blame Game | The Daily Show
28 min - Jon Stewart breaks down Netanyahus urgent strike on Irans nuclear program, MAGA's sustained focus on battling protesters and immigrants in Democratic cities, and how Trumps unattended parade of...
Why Israel REALLY Attacked Iran
10 min - The Chilling Truth Behind Israel's Dark AgendaJoin the Future of Journalism: https://www.patreon.com/DoubleDownNews
Schooling the World (2010)
66 min - If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children. The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it...
How America Is Like A Bad Boyfriend
3 min - But... I love America!
Earthlings (2005)
95 min - EARTHLINGS is a feature-length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete...
Trending Articles
Immigration
No Religion Has a Monopoly on Truth: There's Beauty to Find in Every Tradition (It's Also OK to Discard the Outdated Stuff)
Subscribe for $5/mo to Watch over 50 Patron-Exclusive Films
Subscribe $5/mo View All Patron Films

 

Your support keeps us ad-free and financially independent

Our 10,000+ video & article library is 99% free, ad-free, and entirely community-funded thanks to our patron subscribers!


Want to double your impact? You can subscribe for $10/mo or more as an extra show of support.