• JAN M OLSENFacebook has reversed its decision to remove posts featuring an iconic 1972 image of a naked, screaming girl running from a napalm attack in Vietnam.
The change comes after the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph emerged at the centre of a free speech fight in Norway. Protests started last month after Facebook deleted photographer Nick Ut’s picture from a Norwegian author’s page, saying it violated the social network’s rules on nudity.
The controversy escalated last Friday when Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg posted the image on her account and Facebook deleted that too.
Initially, Facebook stood by its decision, saying it was difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others. But later on Friday it said it would allow sharing of the photo.
“In this case, we recognise the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time,” Facebook said in a statement.
“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 decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.”
Politicians of all stripes, journalists and regular Norwegians had backed Solberg’s decision to share the image.
The prime minister told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that she was pleased with Facebook’s change of heart and that it shows social media users’ opinions matter.
“To speak up and say we want change – it matters and it works. And that makes me happy,” she said.
The image shows screaming children running from a burning Vietnamese village. The little girl in in the centre of the frame, Kim Phuc, is naked and crying as the napalm melts away layers of her skin.
“Today, pictures are such an important element in making an impression, that if you edit past events or people, you change history and you change reality,” Solberg said, adding that it was the first time that one of her Facebook posts was deleted.
Solberg later reposted the image with a black box covering the girl from the thighs up. She also posted other iconic photos of historic events, such as the man standing in front of a tank in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, with black boxes covering the protagonists.
Like its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway takes pride in its freedom of speech. It’s also a largely secular nation with relaxed attitudes about nudity.
It would be physically impossible for Facebook to comb through the hundreds of millions of photos posted each day, so it relies on user reports and algorithms to weed out pictures that violate its terms of service.
A Facebook spokeswoman said that content will not be removed, no matter how many people report it, as long as it does not violate the company’s standards. Facebook usually does not proactively remove photos, with some exceptions, such as child pornography.
Facebook sometimes reinstates reported photos after removing them.
It can also adjust its standards depending on the response. Breastfeeding and mastectomy photos used to be deleted, but after much outcry the company adjusted its policy on nude photos to allow most of such photos.
Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published the photo on its front page last Friday and wrote an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in which chief editor Espen Egil Hansen accused the social media giant of abusing its power.
Hansen said he was “upset, disappointed – well, in fact even afraid – of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society”.
The uproar also spread outside Norway, with the head of Denmark’s journalism union urging people to share Hansen’s open letter. Germany’s justice minister, Heiko Maas, who has previously clashed with Facebook over its failure to remove hate speech deemed illegal in Germany, also weighed in, saying “illegal content should vanish from the Internet, not photos that move the whole world”.
Facebook’s statement said the company would adjust its review mechanisms to permit sharing of the image.
“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,” it said.
Before the photo was published 44 years ago, the AP also had a discussion about the image because it violated the news agency’s policy on full-frontal nudity.
“Maybe we discussed it on the desk for 10 or 15 minutes,” said Buell, who is now retired. “But there is nothing about this picture that is prurient. How can we not publish this picture? It captures the horrors of war. It captures the terrible situation of innocents caught in the crossfire of the war.”
The published the image and media worldwide used it, though some chose not to, Buell said.
– Nampa-AP
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