For more than 50 years, Vietnamese-born AP photographer Nick Ut was credited for taking the photo titled “The Terror of War<\/a>” featuring 9-year-old Phan Th\u1ecb Kim Ph\u00fac running naked from a napalm attack in 1972. The photo landed him and the Associated Press with a Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n However, the Netflix film “The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo” disputes that Ut took the award-winning photo, and that it was actually taken by a stringer named Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7.<\/p>\n “Nick Ut came with me on that assignment, but he didn\u2019t take that photo,” Ngh\u1ec7 asserted in the documentary.<\/p>\n INSIDE AP’S FIRST AMENDMENT BATTLE WITH TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE AS \u2018GULF OF AMERICA\u2019 DISPUTE HEADS BACK TO COURT<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Retired Associated Press photographer Nick Ut has been celebrated for the iconic “Napalm Girl” photo from the Vietnam War. (Alberto Pizzoli\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n The most prominent voice crediting Ngh\u1ec7 is Carl Robinson, an AP photo editor who was working in Vietnam at the time the photo was taken. Robinson said Ut had taken an image of the girl from a side angle but that it was Ngh\u1ec7 who had taken it from the front.<\/p>\n Robinson said he was directed by his supervisor at the time, photojournalist Horst Faas, to credit Ut instead of Ngh\u1ec7 and that he did so in fear of losing his job, regretting what he had done ever since. Faas died in 2012 and Ut did not participate in the documentary.<\/p>\n The Netflix film<\/a> shows Robinson meeting Ngh\u1ec7 for the first time and offers him an apology.<\/p>\n “I feel bad that we stole your name,” Robinson told Ngh\u1ec7 in the film.<\/p>\n AP photo editor Carl Robinson recalls how the “Napalm Girl” photo was in the Netflix documentary “The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo.” (Courtesy of Netflix \u00a9 2025)<\/p>\n The Associated Press published its own extensive investigation<\/a> into the origins of the photo earlier this year and concluded “it is possible” Ut took the photo but cannot definitively prove it “due to the passage of time, the death of many of the key players involved and the limitations of technology.” And while new findings raise unanswered questions and that the AP concedes it remains open to the possibility that Ut didn’t take the photo, there’s “no proof” Ngh\u1ec7 took the photo either.<\/p>\n “AP standards require that a photo credit be removed if definitive evidence shows the person claiming to have taken a photo did not. In the absence of such proof, the photo credit remains,” an Associated Press spokesperson said. \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nick-ut-napalm-girl.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Carl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/stringer-netflix-2.jpg\")
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