The real legacy of ‘Napalm Girl'
To their credit, both AP and World Press Photo undertook
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''Napalm Girl' has become embroidered with media myths — false, dubious, or improbable tales about and/or propagated by the news media,' W. Joseph Campbell wrote in his eye-opening 2016 book, '
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The photo of the children running from their village is in the same category.
Ever since 'Napalm Girl' first appeared, multiple distortions and exaggerations have attached to it. The most pernicious was that the children in the picture had been attacked by Americans. In fact, as contemporaneous news accounts made clear, the napalming of Trang Bàng was a tragic case of friendly fire by South Vietnam. For example,
Yet the horror depicted in the photo has
Campbell cites other instances of the claim, which keeps recurring. In a story mentioning the photograph as recently as January,
Campbell punctures other myths about 'Napalm Girl.' One is that the picture exerted such emotional power that it galvanized American public opinion against the war. Another is that its appearance sped up the US withdrawal from Vietnam.
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Not so.
Claims that 'Napalm Girl' stirred Americans to oppose the war have been made again and again. Journalism professor Samuel Freedman's assertion that the 'searing image played no small part in deepening opposition in the United States to the war' is one of many assembled in Campbell's book.
But a majority of Americans had turned against the war long before June 1972. As
before
'Napalm Girl,' 61 percent of respondents said they opposed the war. That number remained largely unchanged until the war was over. No evidence has ever shown that the photograph had a measurable effect on public opinion.
Nor is there any evidence that it shortened the war, another claim that has been made many times — including by Ut, who has told interviewers that the picture 'stopped the war in Vietnam.'
In reality, the United States began
The tragedy of Trang Bàng was real. The suffering in that photograph was real. But the myth that the image changed history is not. 'Napalm Girl' remains unforgettable — not for the influence it wielded but for the agony it captured. In the end, its true legacy is not about the power of journalism but about the cruelty of war.
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Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
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