The Stringer review, by Vaughan Smith

 

 

I have just watched The Stringer documentary. The film builds a compelling case that a
relatively unknown Vietnamese stringer took the famous “Napalm Girl” picture, rather
than the AP’s Nick Ut.
Sorry to jump the queue. The Stringer isn’t out for general release yet but has generated
outrage from many people who haven’t watched it. I saw it to screen it at the Frontline
Club when possible.
Photojournalist and co-founder of the VII Foundation, Gary Knight, narrates the case,
talking us through the evidence piece by piece. He takes us to meet Nguyen Thanh
Nghe, the US-trained military photographer who claimed authorship of the picture. Fiona
Turner, and Terri Lichstein, long time, award winning, news and documentary producers
(and in full transparency, Turner is Gary’s wife) produce the film alongside him, and the
documentary crew spent months tracking him down. Nghe is now an old man in poor
health who never expected the matter to be revisited.
The narrative takes us from allegations from a former Vietnam war era AP photo editor
to the search and finding of ’the stringer’ who claims he took the photograph, to first
hand witnesses of that moment and the following events. Their recounting is compelling.
The part that finally persuaded me was near the end however, when Gary met forensic
investigators from the highly respected French NGO, Index Investigations. They have

studied all the photographs, film and satellite images available and they lay out their
findings. They clearly show Nghe in the right place at the right time, and Ut is not.
The film upset me and I was grateful that the documentary team’s handled it sensitively.
Distressing though Gary’s findings are, they didn’t surprise me. Newsman screws local
stringer isn’t news to me.
I set up a freelance video news agency in 1988 called Frontline News Television. Half of
us, eight in number, were killed in 18 years of freelance video journalism. As Western
freelancers, we were shafted, and often. Contracts betrayed, awards withheld and
credits stolen. Regular stuff. It was a darker part of news industry culture in those days.
Of course, I knew it was worse for local stringers.
The main reason I launched The Frontline Club, in 2002, was to see at least one
institution in our trade able to treat freelancers, stringers, and other struggling
independents, equally to their employed colleagues. I don’t want to overdo it. There were
many newsmen, and women, who were honourable and supportive in the way they
treated us and remain friends to this day.
Having seen The Stringer, I am putting my oar in the water to support it. I have known
Gary and his wife Fiona for my entire career in journalism and have accumulated great
trust in them. Their documentary is a display of courage and professionalism.
Some feel it wrong to ask difficult questions about journalism because it is under such
threat these days, and the timing may not be ideal for the AP. It might be good to remind
ourselves that while not an excuse, these events took place over a half century ago
when our cultural behaviour was much different and post colonial machismo and
chauvinism in the media and elsewhere was something of the norm; a theme that is
expanded within the film.
We can all feel some sympathy for Nick Ut, but that doesn’t detract from the importance
of holding fast with respect for standards of truth and independence within journalistic
practice whatever our personal friendships and politics and however uncomfortable that
may be.
The AP is an outstanding news organisation, almost a hundred and eighty years old and
second to none.  It is staffed with the sort of journalists who inspired me to dare to film
the news myself all those years ago.
The famous agency is currently blocked from US presidential briefings for declining to
rename the Gulf of Mexico. The AP reports the world, to the world, and argues that it
should only make such a change if and when it is accepted globally.
The name change is silly and I expect the AP will be around 100 years after President
Trump’s psychopathically narcissistic administration has gone into the history books,
having broken as much as it can before it self-combusts, blaming the American people
for its failure.
If journalism is going to play much of a role in speeding that up we have to address the
reality that, almost everywhere, the press has lost the confidence of large sections of the
public it serves. It won’t be rebuilt if we continue to hide our mistakes while feeling
entitled to cash in on everybody else’s.

It is extraordinary that we have got away with not doing so, for so long.