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Guest Post 15: J. Ross Baughman on the NPPA (a)

I provided the National Press Photographers Association with timelines and an A-to-Z list of Capa’s D-Day offenses, expecting that these would be effectively condensed in what editor Donald Winslow described as a major feature story for the very next issue of the magazine. Several of my points survive in the nine-page story they created, certainly one of the longest articles I’ve ever seen the magazine publish during my 40 years as a professional photojournalist. Of course I was deeply disappointed when the thrust of my discoveries was diluted, scattered, and dismissed. […]

Alternate History: The NPPA and Full Disclosure (Not)

Donald Winslow, Bruce Young, and the NPPA were severely compromised from the outset of their coverage of our research, and consciously chose to make none of that known to the readers of News Photographer. This disregard for the fundamental requirement of full disclosure constitutes a prima facie case of willful breach of journalistic ethics. I therefore demand a full investigation by the NPPA’s Ethics Committee of these severe breaches of journalistic ethics by the organization itself, by its journal of record, by its functionaries, and by the writer commissioned for this article. […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa, John Morris, and the NPPA (5)

Bruce Young’s “theory” of Capa’s boils down to the faith-based notion that if you take a mix of amateur psychoanalysis, “fog of war” uncertainty, and a tolerance of truthiness, and then you turn yourself around and you shake it all about, you can “more or less” reconcile the discrepancies, fabrications, misdirections, errors of fact, elisions, improbabilities, inconsistencies, and inherent contradictions embedded within Robert Capa’s and John Morris’s various divergent accounts. […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa, John Morris, and the NPPA (4)

Thus a 7200-word article premised on a research project largely conducted by me incorporates a total of 75 words — slightly over one percent of its content — drawn from my portion of that research and my emails responding to Young’s questions about that project. […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa, John Morris, and the NPPA (3)

I can only describe the National Press Photographers Association’s Donald Winslow and Bruce Young, the writer to whom he assigned the magazine’s report on this blog’s investigation of Robert Capa’s actions on D-Day and the subsequent fate of his images, as severely compromised from the outset of their coverage of our research relating to Capa and his picture editor at the time, John Morris. […]