Week 3 EOC: Rolling Stone Magazine

The recent Rolling Stone article entitled Jahar’s World about the Boston Marathon bombing was an amazing in-depth article.  The article went into great depth and managed to create an almost three dimensional picture of the bomber himself, delving into almost every aspect of his and his family’s life.  The cover, on the other hand, managed to cause some very negative feedback. Many thought that the image was glorifying the bomber, saying that they posed him like a rock star. Never mind that the image was the same one that was used in an article by the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/us/dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-dark-side-carefully-masked.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ), because it was used by a “popular culture” based music magazine, all of a sudden it is a huge controversy; one that caused several businesses, like CVS, to take Rolling Stone off of the shelf for that issue.

While the article had an amazing depth to their insight into the life of the Boston Marathon Bomber, one has to wonder not only how accurate all this information is, but how will this affect the trial, once things reach that stage. It seemed that quite a bit of the article was based on second-hand knowledge, which can be quite distorted by time and other factors. Is it possible that if the article does get things right, that this information, coming from one of the larger pop culture and music based magazines, might have an adverse affect on the trial? And with all the media reports and updates about this tragedy, how hard will it be to actually fill an impartial jury for the trial, should things finally come to that end?