Boston Mayor Menino Blasts ‘Rolling Stone’ Over Tsarnaev Cover


Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has added his voice to the chorus of discontent over Rolling Stone‘s August 3 issue cover, which features marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“Your August 3 cover rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment. It is ill-conceived, at best, and re-affirms a terrible message that destruction gains fame for killers and their ’causes,'” Menino wrote in a letter to publisher Jann Werner. “There may be valuable journalism behind your sensational treatment, though we can’t know because almost all you released is the cover.”

Menino, Boston’s longest-serving mayor, went on to say that he would not respond in anger because it would feed into the magazine’s “obvious marketing strategy.” Instead, he said, he wrote the letter to put the focus where the magazine should have, “on the brave and strong survivors and on the thousands of people – their family and friends, volunteers, first responders, doctors, nurses, and donors – who have come to their side.”

The 70-year-old, who announced in March that he would not be running for re-election after five terms and 20 years as mayor, ended his letter by saying, “The survivors of the Boston attacks deserve Rolling Stone cover stories, though I no longer feel that Rolling Stone deserves them.”

However, Rolling Stone has defended the cover, not once, but twice. In one editors’ note, the magazine says that the cover “falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone‘s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day.” The editors also note that Tsarnaev is in the same age group as Rolling Stone readers, which “makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.”

Managing editor Will Dana also wrote a second editor’s note defending the story, stating:

“We put Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover because the bombing in Boston is the biggest story in America this year. Janet Reitman wrote a terrific, important story. The intention was not to glamorize him or his actions or in any way endorse the sickening crimes he is accused of. The purpose of journalism is to understand, explicate and confront.”

What do you think of Rolling Stone putting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover?

[Photo credit: Christian Holland / Flickr]

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