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Time Editor Defends Doctoring Iwo Jima Photo, Calls Objective Journalism 'Fantasy'
businessandmedia.org ^ | April 21, 2008 | Jeff Poor

Posted on 04/21/2008 3:36:31 PM PDT by Rufus2007

Time magazine continued to defend its manipulation of the classic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo – calling it a “point of view.” Managing Editor Richard Stengel said the cover art was part of the publication’s global warming advocacy and a way of forcing readers to “pay attention.”

Stengel defied the traditional notion that journalists should be unbiased. “I didn’t go to journalism school,” Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”

Stengel supported his claim by stating the role of journalists is not to ask questions, but answer them.

“[F]rom the time I came back, I have felt that we have to actually say, ‘We have a point of view about something and we feel strongly about it, we just have to be assertive about it and say it positively,’” Stengel said. “I don’t think people are looking for us to ask questions, I think they’re looking for us to answer questions.”

(Excerpt) Read more at businessandmedia.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: globalwarming; iwojima; journalism; time
This guys is about as pompous as you can get.
1 posted on 04/21/2008 3:36:31 PM PDT by Rufus2007
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To: Rufus2007
Time Editor Defends Doctoring Iwo Jima Photo, Calls Objective Journalism 'Fantasy'

Translation from Liberalese to English: Expecting even the slightest Objective Journalism from Time Magazine is a Fantasy.

2 posted on 04/21/2008 3:39:41 PM PDT by FormerACLUmember (When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.)
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To: Rufus2007
".... because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy."

Translation: "We have a finincial dog in this race and we're going to shamelessly root for that dog to win."

3 posted on 04/21/2008 3:41:10 PM PDT by meyer (Still conservative, no longer Republican)
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To: Rufus2007
Anyone who thinks that Time magazine is "objective" needs to get their head examined. They've been doing nothing more than "current event based activism" for decades now. The best example that comes to mind, and the last issue I ever read, was their "death by gun" issue, which probably came out in the mid 1980s, or even earlier. I don't remember. But I do remember the outrage of many people, including myself, about the biased, leftist, anti-gun slant of the articles and photos. The response of the editors of Time said it all. They felt that the need for gun control was far too important to bother with "objective reporting."

Mark

4 posted on 04/21/2008 3:41:10 PM PDT by MarkL
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To: Rufus2007

Yep....he picked the wrong subject to run his feelings on. Whether he is right or wrong on the subject........he is wrong for using the Marines. Some bridges just don’t get crossed.


5 posted on 04/21/2008 3:41:15 PM PDT by RC2
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To: Rufus2007

Pompous!

6 posted on 04/21/2008 3:41:38 PM PDT by SolidWood
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To: Rufus2007
"calling it a “point of view.” Managing Editor Richard Stengel said..."

Like that wussy could ever appreciate the sacrifices of our brave Armed forces then, now, or tomorrow. Just look at this beauty parlor wussy.

And here's another Time cover shot by this lady boy...


7 posted on 04/21/2008 3:42:31 PM PDT by avacado
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To: Rufus2007
Stengel said. “I don’t think people are looking for us to ask questions

Five Ws

8 posted on 04/21/2008 3:42:49 PM PDT by RightWhale (Repeal the Law of the Excluded Middle)
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To: Rufus2007
Those scumbags committed a sacrilege but doctoring that photo. How dare they use an American iconic image, one that epitomizes the sacrifices our greatest generation made to preserve our freedom, to further their liberal assed agendas?
9 posted on 04/21/2008 3:43:26 PM PDT by infantrywhooah
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To: SolidWood

Nice lipstick, Dick!


10 posted on 04/21/2008 3:43:49 PM PDT by ovrtaxt (This election is like running in the Special Olympics. Even if McCain wins, we’re still retarded.)
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To: Rufus2007

At least he’s honest, but he’s scary- kind of a print version of professors?


11 posted on 04/21/2008 3:46:36 PM PDT by tennteacher (Hunter Conservative)
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To: SolidWood

Pretty, too. Wonder what shade lipstick he prefers?


12 posted on 04/21/2008 3:47:20 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Don't cheer for Obama too hard - the krinton syndicate is moving back into the WH.)
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To: RightWhale

“Five Ws”

WRONG,WRONG,WRONG,WRONG,WRONG! They may get the who, what, when and where right occasionally but they are always wrong on why.


13 posted on 04/21/2008 3:49:32 PM PDT by A Strict Constructionist (We have become an oligarchy not a Republic.)
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To: Rufus2007; Defendingliberty; WL-law; Genesis defender; proud_yank; FrPR; enough_idiocy; rdl6989; ...
 




Beam me to Planet Gore !

14 posted on 04/21/2008 3:49:52 PM PDT by steelyourfaith
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To: Rufus2007

They can do whatever they wish with their putrid magazine and I will continue refusing to buy it.


15 posted on 04/21/2008 3:55:37 PM PDT by Bigun (“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” —Voltaire)
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To: Rufus2007

If there is not even an attempt at objectivity, why should I believe a word Time says? Why bother reading it at all?


16 posted on 04/21/2008 3:56:37 PM PDT by Unam Sanctam
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To: Rufus2007
Time Editor Defends Doctoring Iwo Jima Photo, Calls Objective Journalism 'Fantasy'

Well, in the case of Time, that is a totally accurate statement. Unusual for them.

On the other hand, most journals and magazines managed to do a creditable job reporting during WW2.

17 posted on 04/21/2008 3:59:08 PM PDT by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
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To: Rufus2007
"...because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy."

Isn't that equivalent to hearing a wife-beater say, "Don't pick on me: Everybody does it"?

No, you crook, everybody doesn't do it.

18 posted on 04/21/2008 4:03:29 PM PDT by bannie (clintons CHEAT! It's their only weapon.; & Barry/Barack has two faces.)
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To: SolidWood
That guy would have to drink a 6-pack and rope a steer while watching NASCAR to work his way UP to Metro-sexual.
19 posted on 04/21/2008 4:05:32 PM PDT by Tex-Con-Man
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To: Rufus2007

I do believe Time has expired.


20 posted on 04/21/2008 4:07:12 PM PDT by pepperdog (The world has gone crazy.)
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To: SolidWood

He could make the top five list of “Guys who look like old lesbians.”


21 posted on 04/21/2008 4:08:14 PM PDT by Richard Kimball (We're all criminals. They just haven't figured out what some of us have done yet.)
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To: Rufus2007
Gay too, then what “journalist” isn't a gay Democrat?
22 posted on 04/21/2008 4:10:09 PM PDT by roses of sharon ( (Who will be McCain's maverick?))
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To: Bigun
They can do whatever they wish with their putrid magazine and I will continue refusing to buy it.

and I will continue to hide it beneath the other family oriented magazines at the dentist or doctors office.

23 posted on 04/21/2008 4:14:02 PM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (Typical white person, bitter, religious, gun owner, who will "Just say No to BO (or HRC).")
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To: Rufus2007
He also said he hasn't been to journalism school...and said that there are some journalism rules but he doesn't know exactly what they are.

Thats just awesome ain't it?

Maybe somebody will hire me as a brain surgeon.
24 posted on 04/21/2008 4:26:31 PM PDT by Arkinsaw
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To: Rufus2007

“Stengel”, sounds like a Nazi name to me. Wasn’t this puke’s dad on the other side or something?


25 posted on 04/21/2008 4:29:03 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: infantrywhooah

Those heroic Marines in that photo were fighting for freedom. The fraudulent enviromental movement is a front for the Watermelon (green outside, red inside) Marxists who would use this hoax to impose bureaucratic tyranny and depotism upon us.


26 posted on 04/21/2008 7:08:56 PM PDT by DMZFrank
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To: Rufus2007; conservatism_IS_compassion

PING!


27 posted on 04/21/2008 7:11:14 PM PDT by PGalt
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To: Rufus2007
Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”

An honest statement from the MSM at last!

Caveat Emptor applies far more to Time Magazine than it does for Exxon.

28 posted on 04/21/2008 7:20:04 PM PDT by Ditto (Global Warming: The 21st Century's Snake Oil)
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To: Ditto; PGalt; Arkinsaw; Publius6961; Unam Sanctam; A Strict Constructionist; tennteacher; ...
Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”
excellent ping, PGalt.
An honest statement from the MSM at last!

Caveat Emptor applies far more to Time Magazine than it does for Exxon.

True, as far as it goes. But the actual issue of objectivity arose only with the advent of the Associated Press, which was by design a monopoly on the transmission of news via telegraph. It systematically crowded out and smothered competitors - and, naturally enough, was challenged as an unprecedented concentration of public influence in a single organization. The AP responded that it included newspapers of all points of view, so it was objective.

The first fallacy in that argument is of course that whoso takes his own objectivity for granted is by that very assumption the most subjective of men.

The second fallacy is that the famously independent voices of the various newspapers would or even could remain independent after they were associated. It was impossible for that to be true, because the AP transformed the business model of the newspaper business. In the founding era newspapers were openly partisan affairs, and - since in any event they had no news source which in principle their readers did not have independent access to, they typically went heavy on commentary and frank opinion - and most of them were weekly rather than daily affairs. That changed to a certain extent in the big cities which in about 1830 got high speed presses which were capable of very high volumes of production and therefore motivated newspapers to aim for a broader market than a highly idiosyncratic editorial perspective would be able to attract.

But the advent of the AP newswire put every AP newspaper in the business of reporting news which in principle their local public did not immediately have access to. That put every newspaper, and its readership, in the fog of breaking news. Say rather, the public had always been in a fog of very sparse information about the world outside the local area - and the newspapers suddenly had the ability to sell access to that outside world. But only on the terms of, not only the local newspaper itself, but of the Associated Press. If the AP didn't report a particular event, no newspaper remote from that event would even have the opportunity to report it. And even if the AP did report it, every newspaper was of course at liberty to either blare it out on a banner headline on the front page, bury it in the middle of the paper, or ignore it completely.

And lest there be any illusion that the AP was ever objective, the history of its relation with the Lincoln Administration puts paid to it. Because in the midst of the turmoil of the Civil War, the last thing the Lincoln Administration needed was the sort of journalism to which we have lately been so uncomfortably accustomed. It was all the administration could do to accomplish the mission in which it was immersed. To have simultaneously contended with the sort rolling PR assault which modern Republican presidents take as part of the territory - and which to his everlasting credit Ronald Reagan was able to overcome even as he whipped inflation, got the country going again, tamed the energy crisis, and transcended Communism - would have sunk the Union. Which was a near-run thing in any event, since General McClellan and his peace platform would have won the election of 1864 but for the Union battlefield successes of that year. Lincoln would not allow the Union to be sunk. So he coopted the AP, giving it favored access to the telegraph offices and to administration officials - in return for censorship, and self-censorship, of news inconvenient to the administration.

So the AP was scarcely out of its cradle when it was deeply enmeshed in the systematically tendentious reporting of the news. And the same sort of thing was endemic to the contemporaneous reporting of World War II. For example, the Roosevelt Administration censored the news of the fact that many hundreds of ships were lost to German U-boats in less than a year after Pearl Harbor - before the Navy had sunk a single U-boat. (None of which information was, of course, any secret to the Germans).

Certainly a case can be made in favor of the censorship which went on on both of those occasions - and, I doubt not, during WWI as well - but what is undeniable is that the same sort of self-censorship which occurred then is not in place now. It is not the bad news for the Bush Administration which is not reported, but the good news. Journalists have been falling all over themselves to emphasize the casualties of the Iraq occupation. Was it objective to emphasize the positive during "good" wars? If so, it cannot be objective to dote lovingly on Abu Graib and to emphasize the 1000th, the 2000th, the 3000th, and lately the 4000th death of US servicemen in Iraq.

Time is entirely within its rights to be an openly partisan magazine like National Review or The Nation. But it need not necessarily expect to have any more circulation than those publications, either. As to the general concept of journalistic objectivity, that is a patent fraud, and it could never be otherwise. But it is a fraud which has been supported by an unremitting propaganda campaign since the memory of living man runneth not to the contrary. Credence accorded to that fraudulent campaign against common sense amounts to a flaw in American culture.

The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .

It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity,
and they very seldom teach it enough.
  - Adam Smith

The Market for Conservative-Based News

29 posted on 04/22/2008 6:42:21 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The Democratic Party is only a front for the political establishment in America - Big Journalism.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
“I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity reality.”
30 posted on 04/22/2008 6:45:39 AM PDT by johnny7
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT


31 posted on 04/22/2008 6:45:40 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: Rufus2007

And so it is with Liberals. They will make endless excuses and will cite endless forms of misdirection, but in the end, it is the same. They have no regard for decency. They have absolutely no grasp of what duty, honor and country means.

Liberals do not esteem America, therefore they deal with her carelessly and recklessly, and it clearly shows. Patriots and those who just love this country instantly see their contempt while their own disdain for America blinds them to their own callous acts.


32 posted on 04/22/2008 7:07:27 AM PDT by Obadiah (I dream of the day when chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned!)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Good post.


33 posted on 04/22/2008 7:24:55 AM PDT by Ditto (Global Warming: The 21st Century's Snake Oil)
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To: Arrowhead1952
and I will continue to hide it beneath the other family oriented magazines at the dentist or doctors office.

Excellent!

I will join in that effort as well!

34 posted on 04/22/2008 3:31:37 PM PDT by Bigun (“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” —Voltaire)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Thanks for the very well done, entirely objective, and most appropriate to this discussion, lesson on the history of print media in our country.

I hope a great many will take the time to read it!

35 posted on 04/22/2008 3:42:15 PM PDT by Bigun (“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” —Voltaire)
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To: Rufus2007
Stengel defied the traditional notion that journalists should be unbiased. “I didn’t go to journalism school,” Stengel said. “But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me – because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”

At least he is honest about it.

36 posted on 04/22/2008 3:43:50 PM PDT by SeaHawkFan
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