The Napalm Girl, the Photographer and The Crop

Michael Shaw has long run a very valuable blog on photographic images, usually related to news or politics, called Bag News.  He has a terrific post now on the famous Nick Ut photo from Vietnam of the girl running from a napalm attack (she has already been hit), Phan Thi Kim Phuc.   Like me, he was not aware of the major cropping that it got right away and forever--the rightward one-third (see left).   Michael thought it interesting that what was cropped out (quite deliberately?) was a U.S. military photog fiddling with his camera, seemingly unconcerned with the terror of the children near him.

But see the comments section below the story.  Of course, some say it was simply and wisely cropped to emphasize the main action.  Then someone says the photog on the right was a well-known U.S. journo named David Burnett who was re-loading film and he can't be blamed for that.  Then Burnett himself  arrives to say, no, it is a Vietnamese photog.  Then someone else say he spots a U.P.I. stencil on the helmet.  Anyway, read the whole thing.  (Film footage of the same burned girl, and a burned baby.)