In response to the cover of the April 28 issue Time magazine, the Media Research Center (MRC) launched a petition that condemned the use of the iconic Iwo Jima photo as a global warming prop.
More than 33,000 signatures were collected for the petition, which calls for immediate action by Time. The petition condemns the liberties the magazine took in addressing global warming:
“I am outraged that TIME magazine has defamed our World War II veterans by equating the ‘war’ on global warming with the heroic efforts of our nation’s military. I am demanding an apology from TIME for defacing the photo of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and saying that the radical environmental agenda is the ‘new red, white and blue.’
“In addition, I am joining with other Americans who are standing against any and all efforts by the media to promote the unfounded Global Alarmist agenda while silencing any criticism or debate about this issue. The environment is too important of an issue for the media to take sides and push a specific climate alarmist agenda. I am calling on the media to report the truth on Global Warming – including the well-documented criticism of the catastrophic climate alarmist theories.”
MRC President Brent Bozell sent a letter dated April 23 to Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel also denouncing the magazine’s use of the photo and the absence of an apology from Stengel. The MRC is the parent organization of the Business & Media Institute.
Stengel defended the magazine’s decision on April 21 in a speech at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.
“Yes, absolutely,” Stengel said, reacting to a question about whether some might be offended by the cover. “I certainly hear that some people would be offended by it. Obviously many people have – were offended by it. But I do think, and I have made this case and I’ve made the case to people who have talked about it, is that climate change and we can even discuss the merits of it or not – climate change is going to affect every living human being.”
“And, to say that somehow we’re taking a little cause in the midst of a big cause, like the veterans of Iwo Jima seems to me to not make sense,” Stengel continued. “I think what we’re doing is raising both by taking two incredibly strong and powerful ideas and combining them. So it is greater than the sum of its parts, rather than either one being the less than the sum of its parts.”
