Initially, Facebook stood by its decision, saying it was hard to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.
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Numerous world’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, increasingly rely on Facebook to communicate with the network’s 1.7 billion users worldwide. Perhaps because Facebook leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Cox genuinely believe this is the kind of image Facebook should be sharing with its users. And he’s just one of many people upset with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg after the social media site censored an iconic Vietnam War photo.
Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg said that Facebook is setting a risky precedent and could be inviting more censorship and that it “must see the difference between editing out child pornography and editing out history”.
Photo after photo was removed by Facebook, and fury grew.
The picture – one of a handful of images that changed how people think about war – shows 9-year-old Kim Phuc nude and running from napalm, her skin burning.
Hansen said that when Aftenposten subsequently posted the photo on its own Facebook page it received a message from the technology giant asking it to remove or pixelate the photo. Facebook promptly deleted it.
And earlier this year, a Danish lawmaker also complained that Facebook had removed her picture of the Copenhagen statue of the Little Mermaid because of its nudity rules. “We really don’t know how these decisions are made so there’s not a lot of accountability either necessarily”.
Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief penned a scathing open letter to the California CEO ripping Facebook for deleting the newspaper’s post including a copy of the “napalm girl” photo, a 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War.
Among those who’ve joined the fray over the photo is Norway’s prime minister.
But Facebook said it was allowing the picture to be posted on the world’s largest social network and will “adjust our review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image going forward”. We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe, and we will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward. The director of media relations, on behalf of the organization, expressed pride in the photo and recognition of its historical impact … and noted that “we reserve our rights to this powerful image”.
Hal Buell, then the AP’s executive news photo editor in NY, said he received a message from Saigon photo editor Horst Faas saying a “controversial picture” was coming up.
“Maybe we discussed it on the desk for 10 or 15 minutes”, said Buell, who is now retired.
“We place limitations on the display of nudity to limit the exposure of the different people using our platform to sensitive content”, the note from Facebook, published alongside Aftenposten’s open letter, reads. It represents the horror and loss of innocence associated with war. “It captures the awful situation of innocents caught in the crossfire of the war”.
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AP published the image and media worldwide used it, though some chose not to, Buell said.
