Power Line has a post with more comments from renowned photographer D. Gorton, on the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of terrorists executing Iraqi election workers, taken by an anonymous Iraqi stringer under suspicious circumstances: A postscript from D. Gorton.

I believe that the various stories that have been told, thus far, by the AP are confusing and at times contradictory. The details in the AP editor’s note are at variance with other quotes ascribed to the AP of “300 meters” from the action, “100” Meters and most recently “50” meters. Further, the original AP caption appears to say that the election workers were the specific target of the terrorists, lending credibility to the view that this was a highly planned operation in which large numbers of people, including photo stringers, might have advance knowledge.

Moreover, there is nothing in the information put forward that would definitively answer critics who believe that the photographer may have been complicit in the event on Haifa St. Even assuming that the Editor at the AP is repeating the story exactly as he heard it (and I have no reason whatever to doubt that), the stated objective of the image — “The images spoke volumes about the situation in Iraq just six weeks before the 2005 national elections — the murder of people key to the election process, on a main street in Baghdad, with the gunmen not even bothering to conceal their identity with masks” — raises more questions than it answers as to the MOTIVATION of the AP editors in moving the photo as well as placing it forward for Pulitzer consideration.

What is clear is that the photograph, in the editor’s own words, fitted into an editorial view that portrayed Iraq as ungovernable and chaotic. Thus, it tended to confirm that notion, to the AP’s readers, just months before the highly successful election.

UPDATE at 4/11/05 8:20:03 am:

An aside: for a look at D. Gorton’s excellent work, here’s his web site.