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"The Stringer" with Bao Nguyen episode artwork

Nov 30, 2025 25 min

"The Stringer" with Bao Nguyen

from Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers Hosted by michaellouismerrill

Who really took the photo widely known as “Napalm Girl”? And does it really matter over a half-century later? In his new Netflix documentary “The Stringer”, Bao Nguyen (“The Greatest Night in Pop”) follows a journalistic team lead by Anglo-American Gary Knight as they seek to show that the real photographer on that day in 1972 in Trang Bang was not the renowned and fêted Pulitzer Prize-winning Nick Ut, of the Saigon AP Bureau, but a “stringer”, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, paid $20 flat and subsequently denied all credit. And Nguyen argues as well that it does matter not only to Nghe and his family, but also to: the Vietnamese people; the Vietnamese diaspora (who had long lionized Ut); to an America that has still not fully dealt with the war; and to the very nature of truth in an era when technology can both clarify and complicate provenance. You can stream “The Stringer” on Netflix. Follow: @baomnguyen on Instagram and X @topdocspod on Instagram and X The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

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"The Stringer" with Bao Nguyen

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This episode was published on November 30, 2025.

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