The iconic photograph of a naked, crying nine-year-old girl fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, known as "The Terror of War," has been the subject of renewed scrutiny following a recent documentary that challenges the long-accepted attribution of its photographer.

The image, widely recognized as one of the most powerful visual records of the Vietnam conflict, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and was credited to Associated Press photographer Nick Huynh Cong Ut. The photograph depicts Kim Phuc, then nine years old, running with her arms outstretched, her face etched with pain, after South Vietnamese forces dropped napalm on the village of Trang Bàng on June 8, 1972. The attack, aimed at flushing out North Vietnamese troops, instead struck civilians on the South Vietnamese side.

While Ut, then 21, has consistently maintained that he took the photograph, a new Netflix documentary titled *The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo* disputes this claim. The film asserts that Nguyen Thành Nghe, a freelance photographer and stringer submitting photos to the Associated Press, was the actual photographer and that he received just $20 for the image.

The documentary further alleges that Horst Faas, the AP’s photo director in Saigon at the time, deliberately reassigned credit to Ut to enhance the agency’s profile and provide their staff photographer with recognition. Carl Robinson, a former AP Saigon photo editor, is a key figure in the film’s narrative. Robinson, now in his 80s, claims that he was instructed by Faas to alter the photo credit from Nghe to Ut before the image was distributed globally. Robinson said he initially feared the photograph would not be published due to the graphic depiction of a naked child but complied with Faas’s directive to attribute the photo to Ut.

Nick Ut has publicly denied the allegations, calling them a direct attack on his integrity and career, which he says has been dedicated to truthful reporting amid considerable personal risk. Ut has filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix and the documentary’s producer, Gary Knight, in a French court. The lawsuit contends the film falsely accuses Ut of building his reputation on a photograph he did not take, which Ut’s attorney describes as defamatory. The trial is scheduled to begin in February 2027.

Kim Phuc, who was severely injured in the attack and bears lifelong scars, currently resides near Toronto with her husband. She previously studied in Cuba and has become an enduring symbol of the war’s human impact. The controversy surrounding the photograph’s authorship has reignited debate over journalistic ethics and recognition while reminding the public of the enduring power of one of the Vietnam War’s most harrowing images.