USA Today’s Neuharth Slams Newsweek as ‘Inaccurate and Unfair Left-Wing Propaganda Machine’
Prompted by Newsweek’s Michele Bachmann cover picture choice, in his weekly Friday column, USA Today founder Al Neuharth, a pretty consistent liberal, recognized the magazine’s political agenda.
“When Newsweek was owned by the Washington Post, it was predictably left-wing, but it was accurate,” Neuharth observed before slamming the new owner/editor who picked a picture to make Bachmann look crazy: “Under Tina Brown, it is an inaccurate and unfair left-wing propaganda machine.”
In the August 19 column, “Newsweek Bachmann cover is outrageous,” Neuharth explained how “last week's cover featured a full-page, wide-eyed facial picture of Michele Bachmann, carefully selected to match the headline, which calls her ‘The Queen of Rage.’”
He recalled: “A full-page cover picture of Bill Clinton in June showed him as a smiling nice guy, in contrast to the Bachmann Queen of Rage cover.”
Neuharth, who began by writing that “Newsweek magazine, under new ownership and a new editor with a London background, has become almost as crazy and racy as the scandalous British tabloids,” concluded: “Editor Tina Brown should acknowledge that her magazine is substituting London fog for real news.”
Earlier:
“Newsweek's Tina Brown Offers No Apology, Doubles Down on 'Crazy' Bachmann Cover”
“If You Thought Newsweek's Cover Photo of Bachmann Was Bad Wait Until You Read the Story...”
“Flashback: Newsweek's Adulatory 2008 Obama Cover Portraits”
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Comments
Yeow! Neuharth scolds Newsweek?
Submitted by Galvanic on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 2:52pm.
He's right about Brown, though. When Rupert Murdoch's enterprise bought the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the MSM fretted that WSJ would be transformed into a London-style tabloid, but many have acknowledged that it has actually been improved.
But Brown is definitely applying the tabloid style to Newsweek, and she's proud of it.
Wow. An honest and fair Liberal.
Submitted by JLin on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 3:55pm.
That is certainly a rarity, even more so when they actually speak out. Nice to see. I used to love Time, Newsweek, and USN & WR back in the 60s & 70s. I have not read them in 20 years.
It would be one thing if a
Submitted by DWoSD on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 4:00pm.
It would be one thing if a leftist could at least recognize their policies when they fail and then say we still want to achieve our goals of helping people, but it is clearly obvious that we have to change our methods. But like the definition of insanity by Einstien, they will keep trying the same thing over and over.
And it never occurs to them that it is capitalism that has helped more humans find dignity than all other economic systems combined.
Do any other NB veterans remember this?
Submitted by Chris Norman on Sat, 08/20/2011 - 2:19am.
I seem to remember reading on NB a few years ago (I've been around here that long) that Newsweek had announced that, recognizing it's declining circulation as a "news magazine", it was going to reinvent itself as a liberal opinion journal, and market itself as such to it's core liberal readership. I remember commenting that it was like the owners of the sinking Titanic reclassifying it as a submarine. I never saw anything about that effort on NB after that. Even so, we've seen the results of the effort.