Saturday, September 10, 2016

Norwegian editor sticks it to Mark Zuckerberg

The Norwegian journal is called Aftenposten. The editor is Espen Egil Hansen. His article takes Mark Zuckerberg to task because Facebook tried to censor a world-famous war photograph, and finally knocked Hansen off Facebook for insisting the picture should remain.

At the end of his article, Hansen writes, "International media outlets: You may use our photos of Espen Egil Hansen and Aftenposten’s publications for this story. You may also use video material in your coverage."

I'm not sure whether this blog qualifies as an International media outlet, so I'll simply refer you here. Go, read, and try to keep your mind from exploding at the small mindedness of Facebook's management.

Oh, and this is the photograph, a classic of photo journalism illustrating in the most human terms I've ever seen the horror of war.

Cross posted at The New York Crank.

3 comments:

Victor said...

That photo, and the one of the Viet Cong suspect flinching as he's about to be shot in the head, are two of the most famous photo's in that stupid "war."

Yes, the little girl is naked, but it's not child p*rn. It shows the horrors of war, and was one of the reasons Americans turned against the Vietnam War.

Tom Hilton said...

I remember this from when I was a kid. One of the most heartbreaking, horrifying images ever. Maybe the folks who run Facebook have no idea of the context, because they're all 12 years old.

The New York Crank said...

The reason the little girl is naked is that she was caught in a napalm attack and her clothing caught fire. She ripped it off as she ran, according to reports at the time, for that reason. All part of the horror we committed under the "domino theory" that if Vietnam became completely communist, Thailand, or Japan, or India would be next. And as we can see today, that didn't happen.

The dunderheads who made war policy had overestimated the attraction of communism, which they saw as a monolith, and underestimated the power of nationalism. Viet Nam never became a Chinese puppet because of the long history of hostility between the two nations. To this day, Viet Nam serves as a buffer against China on China's southern border.

But I digress. What the story of the blocked photograph illustrates is the idiocy of allowing a carrier, which is all Facebook is, to also edit its content. One thing or the other, Zuckersnoop. Both defines censorship and dictatorship.

Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank