Facebook backtracked today on a decision to censor an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl escaping a napalm bombing, after its block on the historic image sparked outrage.
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A statement added: “Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have made a decision to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed”.
Ms Solberg posted the photograph on her Facebook page on Friday after the company had deleted it from sites of Norwegian authors and the daily Aftenposten.
Photo after photo was removed by Facebook, and fury grew.
On Friday, Aftenposten – Norway’s largest newspaper – ran a front-page letter directly addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook had earlier removed the Pulitzer-prize winning shot because of its rules on nudity.
In protest, several other people attempted to post the picture, and were all subsequently suspended as well, prompting Norway’s government to speak out.
The row erupted when Facebook deleted the post of writerTom Egeland who included the image in a feature on photographs that had “changed the history of warfare”.
Many Norwegians have since posted the photo on the social media network in protest, and Prime Minister Erna Solberg joined them on Friday.
Facebook initially defended the move on Friday, saying in a statement: “While we recognize that this photo is iconic, it’s hard to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others”. “Less than 24 hours after the e-mail was sent, and before I had time to give my response, you intervened yourselves and deleted the article as well as the image from Aftenposten’s Facebook page”, Hansen wrote in the letter addressed to the Facebook CEO.
The newspaper had published the image on its Facebook page until it, too, was removed.
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”.
Mr Zuckerberg is being described as “the world’s most powerful editor” due to Facebook’s takeover as kingpin of the worldwide distribution of news and information.
The criticism of Facebook’s perceived heavy hand toward the news media comes soon after it was accused of intentionally suppressing conservative news articles in the United States so that they did not appear in its Trending Topics listing. It is to go on trial in France after a schoolteacher accused it of censorship for blocking his account after he posted a photo of a painting by Gustave Courbet called L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) that shows a woman’s genitals.
“We will be engaging with publishers and other members of our global community on these important questions going forward”.
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“I am upset, disappointed-well, in fact even afraid-of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society”, Hansen wrote, noting the integral role Facebook has as “a world-leading platform for spreading information, for debate and for social contact between person”.
