By ISABELLA MESQUITA<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s New York Times Magazine<\/em> caused quite a stir among renown contemporary journalists. Jonathan Mahler\u2019s cover \u201cWhat do we really know about Osama Bin Laden\u201d raised many questions about the circumstances involved in bin Laden\u2019s death and the veracity of the \u201cstories\u201d told at that time by the CIA and the American Government.<\/span><\/p>\n In Mahler\u2019s story, not only did he retell the story of bin Laden\u2019s death from a\u00a0different perspective, he also added Seymour Hersh’s point of view on what truly happened. <\/span><\/p>\n Mahler begins his article by narrating the series of events that\u00a0took place at the The White House the day Obama announced bin Laden\u2019s death. Within the first few paragraphs of his article, Mahler boldly contradicted the story told by the CIA regarding\u00a0bin Laden\u2019s whereabouts and addressed the story told by the White House as\u00a0\u201canother example of American mythmaking.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that the truth about bin Laden\u2019s death is unknowable,\u201d stated Mahler. \u201cIt\u2019s that we don\u2019t know it. We don\u2019t know what happened more than a half-century ago, much less in 2011.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n According to Mahler, the CIA\u2019s years of painstaking intelligence-gathering to find bin Laden\u2019s hideaway was only a polished and flattering version of the truth. Based on Hersh\u2019s previous publications mentioned in Mahler’s article, bin Laden\u2019s location was revealed by a retired member of the Pakistani intelligence who received a $25 million reward for the information. Thus, in Mahler\u2019s view, bin Laden was never actually \u201chiding,\u201d and the false story told by the media successfully fooled the majority of not only Americans but anyone around the world who followed this noteworthy \u201cevent.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Minutes after the article’s publication, journalists from The Washington Post<\/em>, The Times<\/em> and other newspapers fired up social media with criticism and their opinion about this controversial <\/span>cover <\/span>story. <\/span><\/p>\n While The Times<\/em>‘ national security reporter Eric Schmitt believed the article \u201cstruck a nerve among national security and foreign policy reporters like a few he saw in his three-plus decades at the paper,\u201d others like Jim O\u2019Donnell of Tempe stated that \u201cits the strangest article (he) has ever read in The Times<\/em>; an extreme case of the story that asserts a wholly indefensible proposition by covering the heck out of a marginalized figure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Whether factually, morally or socially accurate,\u00a0The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> must have had substantial reason and motive to bring back to life such delicate issue and to approach it with a rather radical and \u201cconspiracy-based\u201d theory that would naturally cause controversy.<\/span><\/p>\n As a matter of fact I believe\u00a0The Times<\/em> boldly refuted conformities and proved independence from any sort of institutional and\/or governmental control through this article – an aspect of journalism that has been greatly questioned and debated in the 20th century.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By ISABELLA MESQUITA This week\u2019s New York Times Magazine caused quite a stir among renown contemporary journalists. Jonathan Mahler\u2019s cover \u201cWhat do we really know about Osama Bin Laden\u201d raised many questions about the circumstances involved in bin Laden\u2019s death … Continue reading