Newsweek has become a right wing rag with a RW agenda and pushing RW tropes and CT
I have been seeing its content posted here at times, including OP's, and its articles quite often inject RW tropes and ideologies on a one-sided basis, which are given cover by its name and due to so many being familiar with it as a major magazine at one point in the past.
Newsweek and the Rise of the Zombie Magazine
How a decaying legacy magazine is being used to launder right-wing ideas and conspiracy theories.
https://newrepublic.com/article/158968/newsweek-rise-zombie-magazine
Writing in The Columbia Journalism Review last year, Daniel Tovrov depicted Newsweek, once one of America’s most distinguished magazines, as a shell of its former self. All that was left was clickbait, op-eds from the likes of Nigel Farage and Newt Gingrich, and a general sense of drift. “Nobody I spoke to for this article had a sense of why Newsweek exists,” Tovrov wrote. “While the name Newsweek still carries a certain authority—remnants of its status as a legacy outlet—and the magazine can still bag an impressive interview now and then, it serves an opaque purpose in the media landscape.”
Last week, Newsweek suggested one possible purpose: The legitimization of narratives straight out of the right-wing fever swamps. An op-ed written by John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, coyly suggested that Kamala Harris, who was born in California, may not be eligible to serve as vice president because her parents were immigrants. It was, as many pointed out, a racist attack with no constitutional merit, on par with the birther conspiracy theory that claimed Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Within a few hours, Eastman’s op-ed was being brandished by President Trump, who told reporters he had “heard” Harris may not be eligible to serve.
Three days after the op-ed was published, Newsweek apologized, sort of. In an editor’s note signed by global Editor-in-Chief Nancy Cooper and opinion editor Josh Hammer, the magazine acknowledged, “We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted, and weaponized.... This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize.” Still, the magazine refused to recognize what was obvious—that the op-ed was intended to spark questions about the eligibility of a Black woman running for high office. Newsweek’s editors merely feigned horror that the op-ed was taken in the only possible way it could have been taken.
The publication of Eastman’s op-ed says a great deal about the state of Newsweek’s opinion section, which has become a clearinghouse for right-wing nonsense. But it also points to a larger crisis in journalism itself: The rise of the zombie publication, whose former legitimacy is used to launder extreme and conspiratorial ideas. Even by the volatile standards of journalism in the twenty-first century, Newsweek’s recent problems are extraordinary. There are the usual issues: a sharp decline in print subscribers, Google and Facebook, the difficulty of running a mass-market general interest news magazine in an age of hyperpartisanship. But Newsweek has also been raided by the Manhattan district attorney’s office (a former owner and chief executive pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges in February) and has been accused of deep ties to a shadowy Christian cult, amid many other scandals.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Claiming it is a sensible “centrist” position.
I've more-or-less stopped reading Newsweek, other than occasional posts that I've seen here on DU. Newsweek was once my favorite - or only - news magazine, back in my salad days when I couldn't afford many subscriptions. I always found a way to pay for Newsweek, ever since they broke the Watergate story (along with their sister-pub the Washington Post).
Sadly those days are long gone. We Dems/progressives/liberals need to be aware of the constantly changing quicksand political leanings of these once-dependable publications. Maybe some day it will cycle back to our liberal way of thinking - who knows? But for now I wouldn't give them my clicks or my money.
