Rushing to judgement

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - A striking photograph of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Bomber, appears on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Resembling iconic images of a young Jim Morrison or Bob Dylan, the cover vividly conveys a disturbing truth: that the current face of anti-American terror looks eerily like someone who could have been a rock star. The cover has drawn an unusually heated response from sections of the American public. The CVS pharmacy chain quickly announced that it would not sell the issue in its stores, and the mayor of Boston sent the editor of Rolling Stone a letter expressing his dismay at its decision to publish an image that “rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment.” The mayor’s letter ends: “The survivors of the Boston attacks deserve Rolling Stone cover stories, though I no longer feel that Rolling Stone deserves them.” Sadly, very few of Rolling Stone’s critics have taken the time to decide for themselves whether the magazine’s shock tactic is justified by its coverage. Had they done so they would have seen that the Tsarnaev feature is an exemplary piece of reportage: meticulously researched, thoughtful and well-written. In a prefatory comment Rolling Stone’s editors justifiably refer to the magazine’s “long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day” and add that Tsarnaev’s youth, (“the same age group as many of our readers”) made it even more important to “examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens.”