An organization that honored The Associated Press’ Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973 for a picture of a girl running from a napalm attack in the Vietnam War says it has “suspended its attribution” to Ut because of doubts over who actually took it.
World Press Photo’s report Friday adds to the muddle over an issue that has split the photographic community since a movie earlier this year, “The Stringer,” questioned Ut’s authorship. The photo of a naked and terrified Kim Phuc became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy.
After two investigations, The Associated Press said it found no definitive evidence to warrant stripping Ut’s photo credit. The AP said it was possible Ut took the picture, but the passage of time made it impossible to fully prove, and could find no evidence to prove anyone else did.
World Press Photo said its probe 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, lacking conclusive evidence pointing definitively to another photographer, we cannot reassign authorship, either.”
World Press Photo, an organization whose awards are considered influential in photography, won’t attempt to recover the cash award given to Ut, a spokeswoman said.
Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, said his client hadn’t spoken to World Press Photo after some initial contact before “The Stringer” was released. “It seems they had already made up their mind to punish Nick Ut from the start,” he said.
Gary Knight, a producer of “The Stringer,” is a four-time judge of the World Press Photo awards and a consultant to the World Press Photo Foundation.
The AP said Friday that its standards “require proof and certainty to remove a credit and we have found that it is impossible to prove exactly what happened that day on the road or in the (AP) bureau over 50 years ago.”
“We understand World Press Photo has taken different action based on the same available information, and that is their prerogative,” the statement said. “There is no question over AP’s ownership of the photo.”
Meanwhile, the Pulitzer Prize that Ut won for the photo appears safe. The Pulitzers depend on news agencies who enter the awards to determine authorship, and administrator Marjorie Miller — a former AP senior editor — pointed to the AP’s study showing insufficient proof to withdraw credit. “The board does not anticipate future action at this time,” she said Friday.
Photo group says it has ‘suspended attribution’ of historic Vietnam picture because of doubts
https://arab.news/45rh4
Photo group says it has ‘suspended attribution’ of historic Vietnam picture because of doubts
- World Press Photo honored AP’s Nick Ut with its ” photo of the year ” in 1973
- Picture of girl running from a napalm attack became an iconic symbol of the war’s tragedy
Study finds nearly half of UK news stories on Muslims show signs of bias
- Centre for Media Monitoring finds 20,000 out of 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets contain bias and 70% link Muslims to negative behaviors or themes
- Findings reveal ‘deeply concerning evidence of structural bias’ in portrayal of Muslims by UK press and point to ‘systemic problem’ within the media, says center’s director
LONDON: Nearly half of news articles published in the UK in 2025 that referenced Muslims or Islam contained some degree of bias, according to a report issued on Monday by the Centre for Media Monitoring. It also found that about 70 percent of stories linked Muslims to negative behaviors or themes.
The nonprofit organization, which tracks the ways in which Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, examined 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets and found that about 20,000 showed some form of bias.
The study looked at “structural patterns” in coverage that “shape public narratives” about Muslims amid rising hostility toward the community.
“As the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, this report presents deeply concerning evidence of structural bias in how Muslims are portrayed in the UK press,” said Rizwana Hamid, the director of the organization.
It found that 70 percent of the articles it reviewed highlighted negative aspects related to Muslims, though not all of the stories were biased in themselves. The wider patterns were also troubling: 44 percent of the coverage omitted key context, 17 percent relied on generalizations, and 13 percent included outright misrepresentation.
Taken together, the monitoring center said, the findings amounted to evidence of an “information integrity crisis” that distorts public understanding, and “a deeply concerning trend” in reporting on Muslims.
The research points to a “systemic problem within our media ecosystem,” Hamid said.
“When entire communities are repeatedly framed through lenses of suspicion or threat, it inevitably shapes public attitudes, political debate and the everyday lives of British Muslims,” she added.
News brands targeting right-wing audiences were more likely to produce biased coverage, the report found.
The Spectator magazine and GB News were identified as having the highest proportion of “very biased” articles, and as the “worst across all five bias categories”: negative framing, generalizations, misrepresentation, lack of context, and problematic headlines.
Other outlets highlighted for displaying high levels of biased content about Muslims included The Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mail and The Times.
In contrast, the BBC, other broadcasters and left-leaning outlets recorded the lowest rates of bias in the study.
The research comes as British Muslims report rising levels of discrimination. Official figures published in October revealed that religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 percent in the year to March 2025 compared with the previous 12 months.
