Go here. Look at left-hand column.
This week’s Newsweek cover:
In Europe: Losing Afghanistan - Is Victory Turning to Defeat?
In Asia: Losing Afghanistan - Is Victory Turning to Defeat?
In Latin America: Losing Afghanistan - Is Victory Turning to Defeat?
In the U.S.: My Life in Pictures (Annie Leibovitz)
I hope I don’t need to explain why I have a problem with this.
Why do you hate Annie Leibovitz?
Just goes to show that Europe, Asia and Latin America are a bunch of weenies.
Yeah, Annie Leibovitz is like my idol. No hating on her.
And duh our media is crap.
This is that “fuzzy geography” Bush complained about in 2000.
Well, apparently the story is still there, at least. It just doesn’t get headlined.
Typical liberal media. Can’t pass up a chance to feature a counter-culture lesbian unmarried mother on the cover.
Yeah, but it sure makes a difference if the story’s on the cover, where you’ll see it on the magazine rack and briefly think, “Oh shit,” even if you’re buying Sports Illustrated or Penthouse.
Same think as before the Iraq war where what Bush and Cheney said would be front-paged, and the stories debunking their claims would be on page A17.
If you are going to make an argument against there being a liberal bias in the media Newsweek is not a good example for you.
For the record I just came from the MSN homepage (of course it may be changed when you view it) where the main field had a large picture of a burning car with a link to the Newsweek article , Return of the Taliban. They are not exactly hiding the story.
I think it’s marketing, not an ideological conspiracy. There are not as many people in other parts of the world who know or care who Annie is.
Plus, the cover is designed to influence impulse buyers. Perhaps Newsweek thought Annie was more buyer friendly than a taliban fighter.
Marketing is an ideological conspiracy.
It can be, but it needn’t be. A lot of times it’s just giving people what they want.
In this case, we don’t know if Newsweek changed the cover of the US edition in order to downplay the Afghanistan article or if it changed the cover of the international editions in order to downplay the article on A.L. Since Newsweek has printed many a cover which refects poorly on the administration it’s unreasonable to assume that in this particularl case they were trying to supress that article. I mean, why print it at all if they were trying to do so? They’re certainly not compelled to print anything about Afghanistan if they don’t desire to.
Finally, consider the importance of the story. America’s involved in two wars right now - Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d said we won Afghanistan back in December 2001; everybody knows Iraq (which we’d also once said we’d won) is a mess (the only question is, how bad of one), but in the minds of most Americans, Afghanistan had been done except for some nation-building.
It’s certainly important for the world to know Afghanistan’s starting to go south, but it’s especially important for America to know it, because we’re the country most deeply involved.
This is NEWS; Annie Leibovitz is FLUFF. Putting the fluff story on the cover, and burying the real news inside, is making a statement. It’s saying, if you’re not already paying enough attention to the news to actually read a weekly newsmagazine (a rather hefty chunk of the electorate, I’m sure), we’re not going to trouble you with this story, despite its geopolitical and domestic political implications.
A liberal news medium WOULD put this story on the cover here as well as elsewhere. The electorate needs to know about this; an electorate that knows this Administration’s approach to the War on Terror has all but lost us Iraq, and is on the verge of losing Afghanistan too, is going to have some decisions to make.
Newsweek is only ‘liberal’ by comparison with Time and US News.
Right, but their goal is to sell magazines, not to get people who don’t buy their magazines to think. And they figure that people will buy more magazines if they have a cover story about Anne Liebowitz than about Afghanistan.
Nah, that’s vending. Marketing is telling people what they want.
How do you know what is in the minds of most Americans? I’m not being snarky-- is there some polling data or some other info that you’re basing that statment on?
What do you mean by “most deeply involved”?
I actually think Europe is in more danger of Islamic terrorism than the US is because many countries have a large muslim population that are not well integrated into those societies and are disproportionately poor and unemployed. The muslim population in the US is much more integrated into the overall society. If you mean we’re the guys with boots on the ground, I don’t know if that’s the best assessment either. The operations in Afghanistan have been largely turned over to NATO, and the US is just one player among many-- as it should be.
Actually, it appears that most Americans do think things are going badly in Afghanistan. Link.
damn - there’s more ‘merican hatin’ 'mericans than I thought!
Nope. That’s only part of it. Good marketing more often starts by finding out what people actually do want.
Don’t worry. They probably think things are bad for the wrong reasons. 