0:00 When that shutter clicked on a dirt road in Trang Bang back in 1972, the photographer didn't pack up his gear and walk away to file his wire report—he set his camera down in the dust and rushed the screaming child straight to a hospital.0:17 Mm-hmm.0:18 That is the part the frame cuts off, Maeve.0:21 In episode twenty-seven, we looked right into Florence Owens Thompson's weary eyes in Migrant Mother and talked about the lives tucked behind the lens; today, we are staring down Highway One into an explosion that changed how the whole world saw Vietnam.0:40 Pull your chair in closer to the fire, now, Earl.0:43 That photograph is known to history as The Terror of War, taken by a young twenty-one-year-old Associated Press photographer named Nick Ut.0:54 The rain is lashing against the glass here tonight, but in that picture, the air itself looks scalded.1:01 A plane had dropped napalm on a village temple where families were hiding.1:07 And out of that black smoke came children, running for their lives.1:12 That is right.1:13 Nick was standing there with four cameras around his neck, watching the smoke rise over Route One.1:20 Now, I know how that sounds—just another combat shot.1:24 But then he saw them coming through the haze.1:27 Right in the middle was nine-year-old Kim Phúc.1:31 She had torn off her burning clothes because napalm clings like jelly, Earl.1:36 It burns right through the skin down to the collagen, four times thicker than normal scars.1:43 She was screaming out that she was burning up.1:47 Whisht now...1:48 think of the agony of that poor little soul.1:51 Nick took that photograph—the children fleeing, soldiers trailing behind them, and little Kim with her arms out wide.2:00 But the moment the shutter closed, the photojournalist became a human being.2:05 He did not leave her there to be an emblem in the papers.2:09 He poured water over her burns, bundled her into the back of his press van, and sped toward the nearest hospital in Cu Chi.2:19 And that hospital was fixing to turn her away, too, because they were plum overwhelmed with the dying.2:26 Nick flashed his American press pass and demanded they treat her.2:31 Late in life, Kim Phúc, at fifty-two years old, was still undergoing laser treatments with Doctor Jill Waibel in Miami to soften those very scars rippling up her arm and neck.2:44 That camera caught the instant of terror, but it was Nick setting the camera DOWN that saved her life.2:52 God rest the suffering, but you have to wonder where we have seen this before.2:57 It reminds me of the great famine sketches in the Illustrated London News back in the eighteen-forties.3:05 People in power look at an image of a child in torment, and suddenly they cannot hide behind dry military tallies or harvest reports anymore.3:15 The picture breaks through the fog.3:18 I tell you what, it breaks through, but it also scares the folks managing the message.3:24 You saw the twin of that fight just recently in the digital age.3:29 Back in 2016, Facebook's automated rules swept through and censored that very photograph—deleted it right off a Norwegian author's page, and even took it down when the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, reposted it with black boxes.3:47 Imagine that.3:48 A computer looking at one of the most painful moments of human history and calling it an inappropriate image.3:56 Prime Minister Solberg and her ministers had to shame them publicly before Facebook backed down and admitted the historical importance of the document.4:07 Swear on my tackle box, they called it a standard violation until the whole country of Norway raised a holler.4:15 A photograph that won a Pulitzer Prize and helped turn public opinion on an entire war, reduced to an algorithm's red flag because it showed an injured child.4:27 It makes you ask yourself, Earl: when we look at an image of such terrible truth, what is it we are really trying to protect ourselves from?4:37 The camera only keeps the record of what men have done.4:42 Nick Ut gave us the truth of that road, but it was his hands afterwards that gave that child her tomorrow.4:49 Bank the fire now, pet.4:51 It is time for bed.
