At least one right-wing blogger is saying Iraqi stringers working for The Associated Press were complicit in the murder of an Iraqi poll worker -- a photo that helped win a Pulitzer Prize.

An excerpt:

The Pulitzer Prize for felony murder goes to The Associated Press," Scott W. Johnson wrote last Monday in a posting on the blog Power Line. But in an interview yesterday, Mr. Johnson said that the A.P.'s explanation of what happened seemed plausible and that he planned to update the blog, with a link to information posted on Tuesday by the A.P. that he said he had not seen. Mr. Johnson is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative research organization in Claremont, Calif.

In his original posting, Mr. Johnson said that one of the winning photos, which depicted at close range the murder of an Iraqi election worker by an insurgent, indicated a collaboration between the murderers and the photographer. "The A.P. is using photographers who have relationships with the terrorists," Mr. Johnson wrote in his posting. "This is for the purpose of helping to tell the terrorists' 'stories.' "

Santiago Lyon, the director for photography for The Associated Press, called the charges "outrageous and implausible, given the high journalistic standards that we have." Mr. Lyon said that the photographer, a stringer whose identity has been concealed, had gone to the site to take pictures after receiving a tip about vehicles burning from an earlier attack, when the execution occurred unexpectedly. That is the gist of information posted by the A.P. on Tuesday.

Bloggers who criticized the photograph after it appeared on the front pages of newspapers, including The New York Times, on Dec. 20, were dismayed that it was included in the A.P.'s prize-winning submission.

"Did they even bother to discuss the issues raised by the bloggers before bestowing the prize upon the A.P.? Were they ignorant of the controversy?" Michelle Malkin wrote in her blog. She is the author of "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror."