MEDIA MYTH ALERT: “That myth of the ‘Napalm Girl’ was invoked yesterday in a 900-word profile of [Associated Press photographer, Nick Ut] in the Los Angeles Times. The article referred in its opening paragraph to Kim Phuc, saying she had been ‘scorched by American napalm,’” W. Joseph Campbell writes at his Media Myth Alert blog. “In fact, the aerial napalm attack was carried out by the South Vietnamese Air Force, as news reports at the time made clear.”

Including reports at the LA Times, prior to its fundamental transformation:  “The Los Angeles Times prominently displayed the photograph on its front page of June 9, 1972 (see right), and stated in its caption that the napalm had been ‘dropped accidentally by South Vietnamese planes.’”

But then, as they say in the People’s Republic of Oceania, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”