Every musician and celebrity used to dream of being “on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” but that is apparently changing after the biweekly magazine for aged hippies interested in music ran a feature story and cover photo spotlighting alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The reaction has been explosive, with famous people ranging from wrestlers to actors and musicians slamming the publication's sympathetic coverage of the accused terrorist and publisher Jann Wenner with remarks ranging from “pathetic” to “irresponsible.”
Rolling Stone
By Randy Hall | July 19, 2013 | 12:18 AM EDT
By Kyle Drennen | July 18, 2013 | 6:03 PM EDT
During a report on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News on the widely panned cover of Rolling Stone magazine featuring Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a sound bite was included of New York Times media columnist David Carr defending the offensive display: "I think that Rolling Stone committed an act of journalism in both publishing this photo and publishing the story that they did." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Throughout the segment, NBC correspondent John Yang described the near-universal condemnation of the cover, but led up to Carr's commentary by declaring: "Rolling Stone has a history of serious journalism, like the story that led to the resignation of U.S. Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal. In 1970, Charles Manson appeared on Rolling Stone's cover, and other news magazines have had controversial covers, including Hitler and Osama Bin Laden on the front of Time."
WashPost's Media Blogger Bemoans 'Tedious Outrage Machine' Upset with Rolling Stone's Tsarnaev Cover
By Ken Shepherd | July 17, 2013 | 5:53 PM EDT Updated below: Wemple doubles down | Are you genuinely offended and angered by Rolling Stone magazine putting a glamour-style photograph of Boston bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of its August 1 edition, plugging its corresponding cover story, "The Bomber," by promising readers a look at "How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster"?
You are? Well, you're certainly not alone, but Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple thinks you're just another cog in "our country's tedious outrage machine." From his July 17 blog post filed shortly before 11 a.m. and headlined, "To Rolling Stone detractors: Please":
By Noel Sheppard | July 17, 2013 | 5:00 PM EDT
As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Rolling Stone magazine's upcoming August issue features a picture of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover.
Within hours, CVS/pharmacy, Rite Aid, and Walgreens have announced that they won't be selling this issue in their stores.
By Noel Sheppard | June 18, 2013 | 11:09 PM EDT
French actor Gerard Depardieu made international headlines earlier this year when he left France due to that country's exorbitantly high tax rates.
American tennis star Serena Williams apparently agrees with Depardieu telling Rolling Stone magazine, "Seventy-five percent doesn't seem legal."
By Noel Sheppard | May 25, 2013 | 5:02 PM EDT
The perilously liberal Rolling Stone contributing editor and Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings on Saturday accused MSNBC analyst Perry Bacon Jr. of echoing “talking points from the White House."
Such occurred on MSNBC’s Up during a discussion about President Obama’s recent national security speech (video follows with transcript and commentary):
By Mark Finkelstein | February 3, 2013 | 9:40 AM EST
Surprised they didn't opt for the auto da fe analogy . . .
On Chris Hayes's MSNBC show this morning, Ali Gharib, editor of the "Open Zion" blog at the Daily Beast, described the questioning of Chuck Hagel at his Senate confirmation hearing as "a Republican purge" and a "Maoist public shaming." Michael Hastings of the Rolling Stone begged to differ, finding it more reminiscent of "Stalin." View the video after the jump.
By Kyle Drennen | January 7, 2013 | 5:28 PM EST
In an interview with retired General Stanley McChrystal on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer grilled the former Afghanistan commander on his resignation following criticism of President Obama in a 2010 Rolling Stone article: "There were several demeaning quotes attributed to your staff members, even to you, about the President and about key members of his staff....Was he [Obama] furious about what had come out in that Rolling Stone magazine? Did he express displeasure with you?"
While McChrystal was supposedly on to promote his memoir, My Share of the Task, Lauer spent nearly the entire exchange harping on the two-year-old personal drama between the General and Obama: "Did you distrust the people at the White House? Did you distrust key members of the Obama administration when it came to their policy in dealing with Afghanistan?...Did you distrust the President and key members of the administration in terms of their handling of the war in Afghanistan?"
By Matthew Balan | October 26, 2012 | 9:18 PM EDT
Liberal historian Douglas Brinkley gushed over President Obama on Thursday's CBS This Morning and Friday's CNN Newsroom, and tried to put the incumbent in the best possible light: "He's [Obama] a very natural person....He's a really warm and genial person. What he has going for him is he exudes family values." Brinkley later asserted to CNN's Suzanne Malveaux that Obama is an "intellectual...he reads all these books about Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, FDR...he's wonkish, in a sense of detail in history."
Both times, the Rice University professor downplayed the President's "BS-er" smear of his opponent, Mitt Romney, that emerged during his recent Rolling Stone interview of the Democrat by using the veneer of history: "It's another part of 'Romnesia', I suppose. The working man's 'Romnesia' is BS-er....I mean...there's no love between even John F. Kennedy and his own vice president, Lyndon Johnson; let alone Harry Truman, who once said about Eisenhower, he knows no more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday."
By Noel Sheppard | October 10, 2012 | 12:55 AM EDT
Just how frantic are the Obama-loving media getting in the wake of their hero's horrible performance in last week's presidential debate?
Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi on Tuesday actually wrote, "[I]t should be illegal to publish poll numbers" (serious vulgarity warning).
By Liz Thatcher | October 9, 2012 | 12:09 PM EDT
Traditional media weren’t the biggest fans of the movie “Atlas Shrugged: Part I” when it was released in April 2011. With “Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike” set to hit theaters on Oct. 12, it’ll be hard to top the derision of the last movie. Most reviews of the first film were short and to the point – this movie was terrible because conservatives, more specifically the Tea Party, will like it.
By Ryan Robertson | August 18, 2012 | 7:42 PM EDT
Contrary to popular belief, 'Paul Ryan is not Freddy Kruger'. Mainstream media outlets wasted little time in their attempt to discredit the newly appointed vice presidential candidate, while practically ignoring every new gaffe committed by the current one. The constant and vicious attacks of his conservative views and budget proposals mirror the ordeal Sarah Palin endured, but the career congressman has dealt with it all before.
Seemingly everyone has an unfavorable opinion that they're anxious to share, including musicians like Rage Against the Machine lead guitarist Tom Morello. In one of his many op-eds for Rolling Stone, the Nightwatchman called Ryan "the embodiment of the machine our music has been raging against for two decades."