Bruce Young’s article on the Capa D-Day project, and the publication thereof by the National Press Photographers Association, constitute a textbook case of breach of professional ethics — made all the more egregious by NPPA’s posturing as a leader in ethical matters. […]
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Prior to his centennial confession to James Estrin of the New York Times that our conclusions in this investigation have proved correct in almost every particular, John Morris worked feverishly to cover his tracks. This ill-conceived effort took the form of a series of madcap variations on his original fable of the famous emulsion melt that purportedly ruined Capa’s D-Day negatives. […] Clearly, we still have much work to do if we hope to dislodge this fable from the mythology of photojournalism and photo history — not to mention the larger D-Day into which it has become so thoroughly woven. Yet there’s grounds for hope, that “thing with feathers.” […] Sam Wagstaff told Clarence John Laughlin that if he bought something he owned it. He could hang it on his own wall, stick it in a box under his bed, use it as a coaster, scale it out the window — it was his, to do with as he pleased. […] Robert Capa’s habit of self-invention proved contagious for John Morris, his self-styled “adopted brother,” both of them prone to the condition Steven Colbert named “truthiness,” which he formally defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |