Teen Vogue quietly tweaks article on US airman’s self-immolation after ‘glorifying suicide’
NY Post
Teen Vogue has quietly made changes to a controversial story it published about a US airman who lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington last month — days after critics slammed the article for “glorifying suicide” and promoting “propaganda”.
The Condé Nast-owned magazine published a March 5 article about Aaron Bushnell — the 25-year-old US airman who self-immolated on Feb. 25 while screaming, “Free Palestine!” — and the glossy publication got blasted for minimizing Bushnell’s potential mental health issues while portraying him as a martyr fighting an alleged “genocide.”
In one passage that riled critics, author Lex McMenamin wrote: “Some attempted to attribute [Bushnell’s] choice to a matter of “mental health”; others suggested that to report on Bushnell’s self-immolation was akin to promoting it or would cause others to copy him, an implication that independent journalist Talia Jane called ‘plainly absurd.’”
The article sparked an immediate backlash, with many raising concerns about the takeaway among Teen Vogue’s “impressionable” teenage readers.
“Glorifying suicide puts vulnerable people at risk.
Might want to rethink this on a page for young people,” seethed one critic on the magazine’s Instagram page, adding, “Next you’ll be glorifying suicide bombers.”
