By Parveen Chopra, IANS
New York : Widely circulated Parade magazine has defended its decision to run an interview with Benazir Bhutto conducted before the former Pakistani premier was assassinated, but many readers and bloggers have lambasted the magazine.
The US magazine’s publisher, Randy Siegel, said Sunday’s cover story on Bhutto was important enough to publish.
One of the last interviews of the slain leader conducted by best-selling author Gail Sheehy in late November, it had already generated international attention after being posted on the magazine’s website on Dec 27, the day Bhutto was killed. In recent days, Sheehy has appeared on TV news channels to discuss the publishing of the interview by Parade.
The magazine went to press on Dec 21 and its 32 million copies were already on their way to the 400 newspapers that distribute it when Bhutto news broke and the only other option, claims Siegel, would have been asking the newspapers not to distribute the magazine at all.
But the magazine chose not to insert even a note about the outdated story, commented National Public Radio.
Some of the newspapers carrying the magazine, however, ran editor’s notes on the front page or elsewhere explaining that the magazine had gone to press before Bhutto’s death.
The cover headline and kicker line sound ironic now. “I am what the terrorists most fear” is the blown up Bhutto quote, preceded by the question: Is Benazir Bhutto America’s best hope against Al Qaeda?
A disgusted blogger wrote: “It’s just amazing that publications that would claim to prize accuracy would rather honour their hidebound commercial arrangements – Parade’s already been printed, and we wouldn’t want to disappoint advertisers – even if it means appearing to be the dumbest, most clueless publication on the planet.
“There is no more Benazir Bhutto on earth to place hopes in, and there are no elections on Tuesday.”
A reader appends this comment to the story on Parade’s website: “Seriously, in the two weeks since Bhutto’s assassination, you not only couldn’t change the cover, edit the story, rephrase the wording, or disclaim the timeliness? The ‘Sunday Parade’ will forever be the ‘Sunday Parody’.”
Another reader agrees that running the story was “in extremely poor taste and lacking in integrity on behalf of the Parade staff”.
But more than commercial considerations, the magazine may have acted on journalistic instinct. Associated with lifestyle features and celebrity profiles, not breaking stories, the magazine’s editors and publishers may have realised that they had a hot issue on their hands.
The newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Dallas Morning News, which carry Parade every Sunday, didn’t seem to have minded either.
Author of books like “Passages” and “Hillary’s Choice,” Sheehy spent several days with Bhutto in late November at her hometown of Larkana.
Despite the brave quote on the cover, Bhutto told Sheehy that her enemies want her dead.
“I am what terrorists most fear, a female political leader fighting to bring modernity to Pakistan,” Bhutto said. “Now they’re trying to kill me.”
Sheehy asked the 54-year-old Bhutto whether she had healed from the trauma of her father’s death when she was 25.
Bhutto, a moderate who had vowed to fight Islamic extremists if she was elected in an upcoming parliamentary vote, said her father’s parting words before his execution were: “You can walk away. You’re young. You can go to live in London or Paris or Geneva.”
Bhutto told Sheehy she responded, “No, I have to keep up this mission of yours, of democracy.”
And she paid a heavy price for it.
The only price Parade may pay for running the story is that its decision will be hotly debated among journalists and netizens.