The Strange Case of Joe O’Donnell

When she returned, the story was even better. O’Donnell had not only shot some amazingly poignant photos in the bomb-scarred remnants of Japanese cities, but he had also taken the famous photograph of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (known then as “John-John”) saluting his fallen father’s casket. In hindsight, I wish I could say that this sounded too good to be true, but it didn’t. It just sounded good. I am a history buff, and knew which photo Blanton was talking about even without seeing it. That the photographer would be a Tennessean just sounded like good luck. And while it is a very famous photograph, it’s not like he was claiming to have painted the Mona Lisa. It was, in essence, a lucky snapshot—and one that a US government photographer with ties to the White House would have been in a position to take. As Blanton later related, O’Donnell’s wife, Kiniko Sakai and O’Donnell’s longtime friend Furman York were present at the interview and did not raise any objection when O’Donnell claimed the image. And when the O’Donnell camp supplied the copy of the photograph we eventually ran with the article, it further reinforced the notion that he had taken the photograph.

When the article ran in our February 2007 issue, the bulk of the word count dealt with O’Donnell’s personal history. We had even devoted more space than usual to the “At Home With…” column, and only one short paragraph mentioned the John-John photo, which we ran right next to O’Donnell’s own image. The other image accompanying the article was a photograph O’Donnell had taken in Hiroshima of a Japanese boy of about 10 years carrying the burned body of his brother on his back.

Later, in November 2007, we were putting together our “Best of 2007” article. In our five years of existence, we had never done a “Best of…” article before. I am a sucker for year-end “best of” lists of all sorts and had finally, after several years of arguing my case, persuaded the rest of the staff to go along. Blanton had left the magazine (she currently resides in Texas) and had been replaced by our current managing editor, Carrie Simpson. When the staff met to vote on what should be included in the “Best of…” feature, the O’Donnell article from February was a unanimous choice. There was a brief discussion with Matt Lunn, our creative director, about which image to run beside O’Donnell’s blurb. I remember advocating for the John-John image on the grounds that even though it seemed like a minor part of the article, the picture of the dead Japanese boy was too much of a downer considering the celebratory tone of the rest of the article. Considering it ran on the same page as a “Best Swimming Pool” picture, I still think that rather graphic image would have been inappropriate. But the picture we chose turned out to be worse.

I always love feedback from readers. The worst thing that can happen to a magazine is for it to lose touch with its audience, so reader letters and emails keep us on track. A couple of days after our December 2007 issue hit the stands, Managing Editor Carrie Simpson received a terse email from reader Matt Mikula that began, “Joe O’Donnell fraudulently claimed rights to several photographs, including the one on page 73 or [sic] your December issue.” I was skeptical, as we have had occasional calls and letters like this before, and they usually boiled down to either a simple misunderstanding or an unresolvable he-said/she-said situation. But this one was different. After following the Web links Mikula included in his email and doing some more digging online, the whole, strange story started to unfold. The 85-year-old O’Donnell had passed away in August. Obituaries ran in both The Tennessean and The New York Times that credited him with the John-John photograph. Unsurprisingly, this caught the attention of the person who actually had taken the photograph, former United Press International (UPI) photographer Stan Sterns, who objected most strenuously to someone else claiming credit for the most famous photograph Sterns had ever taken.

(Stan Sterns photo is positioned on the left. The photo Joe O'Donnell claimed to have taken is on the right.)

Falsely claiming someone else’s words or images is the greatest professional sin a writer, photographer or journalist can commit. Internet message boards frequented by professional photographers were soon ablaze with the news, and some internet researchers found other instances where O’Donnell claimed work that was not his own. Much vitriol was spilled online, and that eventually made its way back to the mainstream media. The New York Times published a correction, and both the Tennessean and the Nashville Scene published long articles about the incident. The best account of the entire affair was written by Heather Graulich for News Photographer magazine, which is available online here:   http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2007/09/odon01.html

I can add little to the story, except to say that we were taken in much the same way others were. O’Donnell suffered from dementia in the later years of his life, and members of his family, such as his son, believe that the false claims he made were the result of his failing mind. Sterns, the photographer who actually took the image in question, is (understandably) not as charitable, calling O’Donnell a thief.

As for At Home Tennessee, I see a couple of ways we could have done things differently. The focus of the original February article was on O’Donnell’s postwar Japanese work, the provenance of which is not in question. The inclusion of the John-John photograph was almost an afterthought, but we felt it was an important part of the man’s life story. Because of the situation surrounding the interview, it did not occur to me or to anyone else on our staff that O’Donnell might be lying about a matter of such import, so we did not check his claims in regard to the John-John photograph. And even had we done so, it is not clear, given the resources at our disposal and time constraints we were working under, that additional editorial fact checking in January 2007 would have uncovered competing claims to the photograph. But the inclusion of the photograph in the December issue is a different matter. I wrote the “Best Of 2007” article. I read the Tennessean and the New York Times online every day, and check the Nashville Scene Web site about once a week. I never saw any of O’Donnell’s obituaries or any of the articles about the controversy that followed. Seeing as I read all sorts of articles from those sources, I don’t know how I could have missed it, but I did, and for that I am very sorry. Furthermore, it did not occur to me that O’Donnell might have died since we ran the article. Had I checked to see if he was still alive, we would have caught wind of the controversy before we published the photograph a second time. In retrospect, this seems to be my most egregious error. I apologize for any hurt or damage we may have inadvertently caused Stan Sterns or anyone else involved in this matter.

This incident has reinforced with me the notion that the concepts of “facts” and “truth” are often slippery things, that human memory is not as reliable as we would like to think and that the worst trouble will always come from the sources you suspect the least. Did Joe O’Donnell intentionally mislead us (and everyone from CNN to his own family), or did he sincerely believe what he was saying? We will never know for sure. But we at At Home Tennessee and I personally as a journalist promise to redouble our efforts to bring our readers the best and most accurate lifestyle news from across the state. And when we make a mistake, we will come clean about it, because without the trust of the reader, we are nothing.

—Chris McCoy, Senior Editor