SHOOT THE MESSENGER
In the public controversy about the new film The Stringer, photographer Nick Út is featured as a carrier of truth, and the film itself is positioned as a carrier of truth, but under audience scrutiny, both fare badly. Ten key factors matter in weighing the response, not just the film
I. The Business
In any given week, on any given day, Netflix can drop $100 million fresh on lawyers. And that’s not even the fun part. The fun part is that if they have to do it to fend off a suit as a defendant of a slander or libel charge, they’ll win long before the trial is over, and the extra unnecessary days will earn them money.
If you’re an opposing lawyer, that scenario has to be considered. But what’s this about, anyway? Let’s peel the layers.
Netflix, which we remember is in the movies business, picked up and released a very cinematic documentary about an investigation. First seen at Sundance, the film tracks the investigation. The investigation was about a rumor that seriously questioned journalistic integrity. The outcome of the investigation was that three of the four primary parties investigated agreed that the questioning was reasonable enough to cast doubt. The documentary’s coverage of the investigation let that come through unfiltered.
The documentary follows the chief investigator, a private one who, while not quite rivaling Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye, has a memorably even-tempered presence throughout: subdued, but insistent.
Unwrapping one thing after another less by prediction than by hunch, he ends up with some unanswered questions, some people get hurt, and he walks away, but things are different in a way that can’t be undone. Heroes are deprecated but also something of America’s better angels glows; unheard voices have come out alongside celebrities; and when the credits roll there is a bit of a cliff-hanger.
This is a no-brainer story for Netflix.
It’s called The Stringer. In it, one of the most important photographs ever published, The Terror of War, gets its provenance studied. We are freshly reminded of its power to affect good, but something is not quite right under the bright lights.
Getting distributed by Netflix is an incredible longshot for most filmmakers. This film, and the reaction to it, are a cultural flash phenomenon. But months are going by, and the flashing hasn’t stopped.
From a bird’s eye view, here is what’s been happening. Looking for truth, an investigation of the photo’s provenance pursued something questionable; then the investigation itself was deemed questionable; then the documentary pursued the investigation; and then the documentary was deemed questionable. There is now more drama around the documentary than there is within it. (This is, by the way, perfect for a film distributor.)
II. The Players
The film’s detractors savage it. But the film’s appeal rises easily from something sure-fire: violating taboos.
Within the film, one taboo is the subject: a revered news photo editor is accused of breaking journalistic ethics, falsely accrediting an epically historic picture known popularly as “Napalm Girl”.
Around the film, a different taboo is featured: the discrediting of Nick Út, a popular cultural hero, by presenting a story that denies his reputation as the historic photo’s source.
Reactions to the film have largely merged with reactions to the investigation documented by the film. Or it is probably safe to say that usually the two have not even been distinguished by the public in the first place.
In the bird’s-eye perspective, the documentary is the messenger and the investigation that it covers is the message. This might seem too nuanced a point, but public criticism has been robust that the film itself is a bad or failed film, not meeting what many believe is the purpose of a documentary.
Yet, if we look at how the film covered the investigation, it is pretty difficult to conclude that the film does not do the job well. There are no points at which the film fabricated something about the investigation that is not true about the investigation or how it proceeded.
Regardless, per most of the film’s most outspoken viewers, the investigation itself held harsh but highly debatable news, and the film’s interest in publicizing the investigation is seen as having a motive that warrants condemning the film.
As for Netflix, its decision to show the film is roundly disparaged as being exploitatively self-interested at the expense of an undeserving victim, hero photographer Nick Út. That same judgement is passed on the real-life investigator, photojournalist and political activist Gary Knight.
III. The Mediums
The Stringer is a case of one medium being used to convey ideas about another one. There is the matter of how photography serves a purpose, and then the matter of how filmmaking presents that use of photography. The film focuses on the investigation as the way to see the activity about the photo. Because of that, the key “medium” at hand, the intermediary conveying the story, is the investigation. The film forms how we see the investigation; but the investigation forms how we see everything else.
Much of what is going on about this film raises fundamental questions about how media is used to serve public interests. And there is a historical dimension to that which is rooted firmly in technology. In 1972, when “Napalm Girl” was shot, the technology to publish it was a cumbersome affair requiring ground transportation, chemistry, printing and radio transmission. Today getting such an image from the moment of its capture in the camera to an audience of millions is two clicks to Instagram on the internet. Furthermore, consider how easily we anticipate live video as another option.
Not only is technology inherently a mitigating factor of presenting the image; we actually base our sense of meaning on it. In the passionate controversy over the authorship of a still photo’s origin, all of our expectations or needs about the still photography format are front and center of why the authorship story is important.
Still, with all presumptions about still photography in place, the basic question underlying the investigation’s dispute about the picture’s authorship is “who took the picture”.
The heart of the investigation is the idea that a different person, not the usually credited one, is an equally credible candidate as the author of the photograph. And that has to do with being equally capable for the occasion. As far as the public is concerned, the author of the photo is a “medium”, too, invoking one world’s presence into another world.
IV. The Agents
Mastery in photojournalism is as much defined by the actual achievements of practitioners as by any code of practice. Usually, there is a demonstrable divide between photographers who have an opportunity to make a special picture and those who actually get it done. Those who do it frequently are justly celebrated, as are all special performers in human endeavor. In photojournalism, the performance magic starts with the ability to be in the right place at the right time; shifts instantly to being aware of what makes the moment important to someone; then leveraging the photo instruments to create the corresponding image.
The answer to the question, “what kind of person is capable of making a picture like this?” is the heart of public disagreement with the investigation covered by the film.
But in the investigation, there are two key persons performing in the practice. One is the photographer on site in the field of action. The other is the photo editor in the photolab or office who surveys all gathered images and decides which of them to present and how. In their relationship, the ethics are that the photographer “tells the truth” with the photograph, and that the editor tells the truth about the photograph.
Critics of the investigation in The Stringer say that it both unnecessarily and incompetently questions whether the ethics in that relationship have been upheld. In that view, both the photographer and the editor of record, based on their own well-demonstrated special qualities, had already set their story and their reputations beyond suspicion by the time of the alleged incident. The essential challenge to the investigation, then, is the question, “Why bother?”
V. The Motives
A repeated counter-claim for the photo’s authorship offers the reason to investigate the usually accepted version of the authorship narrative. But opponents of the investigation and of the film push deeper; they want to know what motivated taking the counter-claim seriously in the first place.
We can assume that if the counter-claim merely provoked curiosity enough to start an investigation, any subsequent lack of substantive evidence would likely have ended the effort.
Even with substantive evidence, the investigation’s drive to being completed aims only so far as to create persistent reasonable doubt about the usual narrative (“Photo by Nick Ut”). To do that, it must make its case logically, more strongly than just a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. How strong? For the case to resolve in the counter-claim’s favor, the counterclaim must make as much sense as the prior claim lacks.
Accordingly, the investigation does not just present an opposing narrative to the prior established one; it seeks to undermine the idea that the accepted narrative’s details “add up”.
The most prominent of those details include what photographer was in position to take the shot; and what happened between the editorial discovery of the shot and the publication of it.
VI. Prosecuting the Case
Amidst that challenge, the court of public opinion about the investigation and its impact has been on a pendulum swing.
On one end, it’s about whether the investigator’s evidence is credible; on the other, whether the investigation’s logic is strong enough. Over any period of time, any detractor may cover the full spectrum.
In one prominent example of the reactions, seen in facebook, a top public social media forum, commenters on the investigation are overwhelmingly negative about both ends; and as a group they are outnumbering the combined positive or undecided commentators by a ratio of more than 8 to 1. In the negative commentary, it is common to doubt what the investigation presents as evidence because of its being too difficult to verify by witnesses. That leaves the investigator appearing to try overly hard to make his logic work. In turn that raises for them the question of why he is trying so hard.
In protests against the film, suspicions about the investigator’s motive frequently overwhelm or even prevent close study of the investigation’s evidence. In such examples, the Washington Post ran an extensive article “rebutting” the film’s claim to legitimacy, and Medium.com posted a passionate “prosecution” of its credibility.
Example 1:
Example 2:
But not everyone shares that perspective. In fact, “standard of proof” works the same way for the investigator as it does for those objecting to him.
Two particular assessments, both presumably unbiased, hold more significance than others.
· The World Press Photo organization rescinded its authorship credit to Nick Út; given new evidence, the organization decided that Its standard of proof for credit turns out not to have been met.
· And when the Associated Press finished its own investigation, its conclusion was that no other party had a strong enough claim now on the authorship to warrant removing the credit from Nick Út. In effect, it said that the standard held by AP in the past would be accepted regardless of what its standard is today, but that today AP neither proved nor denied that Nick Ut was the photographer.
Both organizations, in other words, landed on reasonable doubt. As the leading representatives of their field — photojournalism or Press photography — their decision actually leans in favor of the investigation. Yet nonetheless it clearly struggles to find acceptance by most members of the field.
VII. Consequences
Despite the finished film and investigation, 50 years of celebrity for Út did not just evaporate; he is still famous, still supported, and none of his good deeds over the decades have been undone. Meanwhile, the historical significance of the photo was never an issue and still isn’t.
Even including the AP and World Press conclusions, this has left controversy as the most important immediate consequence of the investigation.
Then, surrounding the investigation, there is the film. For the film, the consequence is different. The issue with the film for its detractors is that even if the investigation won its case, the harm of that outweighs the good and was unnecessary. They ask why doing the investigation at all was so important. They hold the film responsible for going beyond telling the story about the investigation: it is challenged to justify why it tells. Pending that, mistrust is the immediate consequence.
VIII. Fact versus Fiction
The film exists in a broad social context: the role of the documentary genre. The expectations of a documentary are usually that it intends to present something that has inherent meaning, subject matter that is meaningful by default. What the film can do, as documentary, is to supply powerful additional context to make that meaning explicit.
And just as most audiences of “news” photography require it to be truth-telling, the photographic and narrative claims of “documentary” are also expected to be truth-telling.
As non-fiction narrative, still photography and film are each put to the same two tests. One test is veracity; the other test is credulity.
In this case, those tests extend more broadly than to the photo; there is the news agency process that took Nick Út to prominence is in view. And they are broader than the film; there is the commercial film distribution process that takes The Stringer to prominence.
Each process is subject to being evaluated, both for its veracity and credulity.
Some ask, “is the photo credit allowed to be uncertain or even unexamined because it helped maximize the influence of the picture?” And others ask, “is the film’s dramatization of the investigation acceptable because it increased attention to the issues the investigation raised?” Anyone can ask, “did they both just do what is necessary, or did they both go too far?
IX. Disinformation
One thing largely obscured in the shockwaves of the controversy is that holding the investigation itself to ethical standards does not automatically require it to meet journalism’s standards.
In fact, the more obvious standards that apply to the investigation are those of an actual court of law rather than either journalism or a court of public opinion. In a legal court, evidence can be thrown out or accepted, juries can stalemate without conclusions and even be replaced, and a judge can dismiss testimonies, witnesses, lines of inquiry, or even entire cases. Arguably, the actual investigation covered by the film subjects itself to all of those tests; the question is whether the jury is impartial.
Another thing that gets suppressed by the controversy is the investigation’s actual intended story about the harm of dis-information. If the investigation juxtaposes the story of Nick Út’s celebrity against the story of a humble stringer, Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, denied his rights, its drama is in establishing that the former caused the latter.
We know, without needing to be reminded, that such exploitation would be morally (personally) and ethically (societally) unacceptable. What the film viewers presumably did not know beforehand is that it might have happened behind the scenes. That makes the posture of the film, even if just an allegation, an “expose”. Taking the obvious cue from the film’s title, The Stringer, we can assume that the documentary’s interest is in making this perspective the context that gives the investigation its meaning.
In the public protest to the film, however, the tendency is to cast The Stringer as a matter of Nick Út’s honesty versus Gary Knight’s motives. Because of that, the plight of the real stringer, Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, sits dimly in the background of the controversy. As a thought experiment here in the waning days of 2025, we can speculate on whether The Stringer, post-controversy, will be understood and categorized in the future libraries of film and publishing as a “social justice” story.
X. Judgement
Photojournalism done right has been indispensable for decades as the awareness of the world became more and more broad and complex.
But we now live in a time when technology has increased disinformation’s risks by orders of magnitude — through pervasive social media and AI; the allure of echo chambers and fakes; bias versus knowledge.
With journalism’s intended role now under siege as a result, anything that further undermines public confidence in it can only expect to attract fierce opposition to it from the field of practitioners.
But the public controversy’s focus on Nick Út’s reputation probably itself perpetuates a lowering of standards.
The need to attend to the fuller implications of dis-information past and especially present is exactly the true significance of the investigation and of the film about it.
Without a return to such attention, the actual justification of photojournalism’s importance — trust — is obscured to a degree that the discipline becomes untenable. The film itself is not an example of disinformation unless the public insists on reacting to it that way, and then we have to ask ourselves why they would insist.
