Newsweek Hits Journalistic Low

Forty years ago this spring, former Harvard president James B. Conant' 14 graced the covers of both Time and Newsweek. But this is a different era, and it was jarring to see President Neil L. Rudenstine on the cover of Newsweek last week.

Even more jarring was the picture of President Rudenstine that the magazine decided to portray. Rather than depicting the tanned, well-rested Rudenstine who now occupies Massachusetts Hall, Newsweek searched as hard as it could--and ultimately acquired--unflattering photos which make Rudenstine appear, to say the least, severly haggard.

Why did Newsweek do this? The magazine was working on a cover-story about exhaustion. And since the president had recently taken a three-month sabatical to recover from fatigue, its editors likely saw in Rudenstine their perfect cover-boy.

In attempting to acquire an unflattering photo of Rudenstine, however, Newsweek crossed the line between good journalism and tabloid trash. Early in the week before their story ran, Newsweek rep-resentatives arrived on campus in search of a photo which would embolden their story.

They looked at several photos offered up by the Harvard News Office, but rejected them all because they did not reflect the Rudenstine they wanted to show on their cover. Newsweek then contacted several photo distribution companies, as well as The Crimson, in search of a photo of the exhausted Rudenstine. But apparently the magazine could not find what it was looking for.

As Newsweek's Saturday deadline ticked away, finally a bargain was struck. Harvard agreed to let Newsweek photographer Ira Wyman take pictures of post-Caribbean Rudenstine at the President's Dance for first-years.

But apparently this was not enough to satisfy the magazine. They wanted an ace in the hole, it seemed, just in case the photos from the dance weren't exactly what they wanted.

Enter former Crimson photographer Ali Zaidi '94. Zaidi came to The Crimson building, selected a file photo of Rudenstine taken four years ago taken New York (before Rudenstine became Harvard's president) and said Newsweek would pay for it.

The Crimson declined the offer, because the picture Zaidi had selected had nothing to do with what Rudenstine looks like now or even what he looked like when he was exhausted. If we had had a picture of Rudenstine when he was suffering from exhaustion last fall, we would have gladly sold it.

But what Newsweek wanted would have misrepresented the story of Rudenstine's departure. What the man looked like four years ago in New York has nothing to do with how he looked when he left his position last fall.

But that didn't seem to matter. Newsweek wanted an exhausted looking Rudenstine and appeared willing to do whatever was necessary to get it. The photo which the magazine ultimately chose to run on its cover is obviously a closely cropped blow-up seemed intended to make Rudenstine appear as haggard as possible. The deceptiveness of this photograph is apparent when compared with other photos of Rudenstine taken that same night.

Newsweek has every right to depict someone suffering from exhaustion. But it is wrong for journalists to try to make someone appear to be suffering from exhaustion if that person no longer has such a condition. Such misrepresentation gives all journalists a bad name.