Raw Story reports:
The United States edition of the October 2, 2006 issue of Newsweek features a radically different cover story from its International counterparts, RAW STORY has learned.
The cover of International editions, aimed at Europe, Asia, and Latin America, displays in large letters the title “LOSING AFGHANISTAN,” along with an arresting photograph of an armed jihadi.
The cover of the United States edition, in contrast, is dedicated to celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and is demurely captioned “My Life in Pictures.”
I have nothing against Annie Leibovitz. She is a fantastic photographer and I really enjoy her work. I’d be very interested to read a profile about her life and experiences taking photos of important and famous people. But, where in the fuck does Newsweek get off downplaying to the American people the vital and depressing news from Afghanistan, while it puts it front and center for their international audience? This is election season. The country has been at war in Afghanistan for almost six years and at war in Iraq for almost four. Things are not going well and we deserve to know that. The Bush administration is trying to paint the GOP in Congress as the better party to protect our national security. They never give an honest appraisal of the situation abroad, preferring to tell us about last throes, purple fingers, and captured terrorists. Newsweek just enables them to deceive the public by reducing the profile of their reporting on the “Global War on Terror”.
It’s a disgrace. The American people deserve the truth. We went through this before in Vietnam, where the government was allowed for too long to paint a rosy picture of progress, while the media soft-pedaled the bad news there. We lost 58,000 people in Indochina. It didn’t have to be that way. Newsweek should consider this history and put the hard facts front and center in front of their domestic audience. Only we can choose our government. International audiences have no right to be better informed than we are.