Norway's largest newspaper has accused Facebook of censorship after the social networking giant deleted a famous Vietnam War-era photo of a young girl running naked on a road after a napalm bombing.
The photo was published on Aftenposten's front page on Friday along with an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In the message, the paper criticises the company's removal on Thursday of the photo from Aftenposten's Facebook page under rules against nudity.
Editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen said his newspaper would "not comply" with a request to remove Nick Ut's 1972 photo that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg on Friday also shared the Vietnam War photo on her Facebook page with an entry saying the company "has drawn the wrong conclusions when censoring such photos."
A few hours later the post was no longer visible, and the premier had not removed it herself, public broadcaster NRK and news agency NTB reported.
Hansen said he was "worried that the world's most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way."
The minister of culture, Linda Cathrine Hofstad Helleland, tweeted that she planned a meeting next week between Norwegian editors and Facebook representatives.
