There are many memorable images of the September 11th tragedy. Perhaps none is as gripping as the photograph of three New York City firemen raising the American flag from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The firemen are dirty and look exhausted; but they seem to symbolize the heroism exhibited by so many on that dreadful day. The photograph, taken by Thomas Franklin of the New Jersey Bergen Record, is surely one of the most famous images to come out of the disaster and represents to many American courage, determination, and an indomitable spirit.

Indeed, it reminds me of the photograph of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. The Iwo Jima picture won the Pulitzer Prize that year and many considered "Firefighters at Ground Zero," a lock for this year's Pulitzer in the breaking news photography category. But that was not to be.

The Pulitzer judges selected four photographs published by the New York Times as this year's winner. The pictures are powerful, to be sure, but in the view of Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, the snaps are also politically correct. The Times' montage has three shots of the destruction at ground zero and one of the reaction of two African American females. Peyser wonders if the fact that in Franklin's picture the three firemen are white males and the image centers on the American flag had anything to do with the judges' selection. Could it be that the picture does not fit the fashion of political correctness?

"Absolutely not," Pulitzer Chairman Seymour Topping told the Washington Times' Jennifer Harper. Topping claimed that it was the quality of the Times' photos that decided the award and rejected any allegation that politics were involved. Peyser is taking a lot of heat for her suspicions on Internet web sites devoted to the media. She has been labeled "intellectually bankrupt," "scurrilous," and so on. Guess she must have touched a nerve.

Franklin told Peyser he was disappointed not to receive the Pulitzer, but gratified by the overwhelming public response to his picture. The photograph has won a number of photo-journalism awards, has been made into a postage stamp, and demand for reprints and posters has been overwhelming. But none of this carries the prestige of a Pulitzer.

Of course, the Pulitzer Prize is not the first controversy surrounding the photograph. Original plans by the New York City Fire Department to make it into a memorial statue also ran afoul of political correctness in the form of ethnic diversity. Instead of three white firemen, the statue was to feature one white, one black and one Hispanic. City firemen were outraged that FDNY officials would tamper with part of the department's history and launched a grassroots campaign to halt the project. In January, plans for that statue were dropped and the department promised to explore "other options." No word yet on what they have come up with.

Stepping back, we have to wonder how such a unifying event as the 9/11 tragedy and one simple, but powerful photograph could become the subject of so much controversy. Is it true that photographs, like clothes, have a period in which they are most in style? Most desired? Could it be that this is simply not the right decade for Franklin's photograph? Any more than it is the right decade for a bustle or a hoop skirt?

May 2002

From Accuracy in Media's Media Monitors, by Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid