High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Raising the Flag at Ground Zero is a photograph by Thomas E. Franklin of The Record (Bergen County, NJ), taken on September 11, 2001. The picture shows three New York City firefighters raising the American flag at ground zero of the World Trade Center following the September 11 attacks. The official name for the photograph used by The Record is Ground Zero Spirit. The photo appeared on The Record front page on September 12, 2001. The paper also put it on the Associated Press wire and it appeared on the covers of several newspapers around the world. It has often been compared to the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal during World War II.