Time Editor Defends Doctoring Iwo Jima Photo, Calls Objective Journalism 'Fantasy'

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.”
Donald Mates, an Iwo Jima veteran, told the Business & Media Institute on April 17 that using that photograph for that cause was a “disgrace.”
“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Mates said. “Whoever did it is going to hell. That’s a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor.”

www.businessandmedia.org...


Time certainly is fantasy journalism. I can think of several other media outlets that I would consider fantasy journalism :: cough cough Fox News:: Atleast the people at Time arent pretending they are real journalist.

[edit on 23-4-2008 by Master_Wii]

I'm pretty sure that veterans are mad that Time chose to alter the original photograph. I doubt that anyone would have blinked, if they had used the imagery of the raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi.

The Rosenthal photograph has been an icon since it was first published and to those who fought there it represents the specific sacrifices made on a tiny, pork chop shaped, volcanic island in the Pacific.

It was an insensitive thing to do and Time should apologize.

The imagery of the Marines and the Corpsman raising the flag has been used many times without disturbing anyone.

This was just going a bit too far.

Read about the battle for Iwo Jima and you might come to appreciate why this picture is so sacred to those who fought there.

For all who bear its scars, the battle for Iwo Jima, 58 years ago (February 19-March 26, 1945), still looms gargantuan, unbelievable, devouring; not measurable by Guadalcanal, Peleliu or Belleau Wood, but by its own arena, complexity, ferocity and the character of its combatants, whose American casualties were one third of all Marine Corps casualties in the war.

Iwo Jima was the only Marine battle where the American casualties, 26,000, exceeded the Japanese -- most of the 22,000 defending the island. The 6,800 American servicemen killed doubled the deaths of the Twin-Towers of 9/11.

www.military.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 2008/4/23 by GradyPhilpott]