For decades, the weekly (changed to bi-weekly in 2021), the Editor-In-Chief of Time magazine claimed to be promoting the most newsworthy story on their cover page. Right in line with the typical misogynist thinking that has dominated most of our country’s history, these covers almost always featured a straight, white male. In the year 1990, for example, 54 Time covers featured: Mikhail Gorbachev (Person of the Decade), Charles Stuart (murderer and racist), Joe Foss, Michael Milkin, Richard Nixon (In 1990? Really?), Dan Quayle (Can you get more white-male than Dan effing Quayle?), Scott Turow, Helmut Kohl, David Souter (OK, he might be whiter than Quayle), David Lynch, Dick Cheny, and Ronald Reagan. That may not seem to be an overwhelming number, only twelve covers out of 54, but take into account that 31 of the 54 covers did not feature a specific person (or a fake person in the form of Bart Simpson) and it becomes apparent that a large majority of the cover pieces focused on a single person shared a common trait: they were almost exclusively on straight, white men.
How did this bias change over time (pun intended)? Quite slowly, actually. As recently as 2010, 52 weekly covers in the US contained eleven stories written about specific individuals. Of those, nine of them featured a straight, white man. It wasn’t until the late 2010’s that Time started to come around to the concept of diversity and inclusion. Some viewed it as the magazine finally opening up to the fact that there are interesting and compelling news stories in the world that don’t include straight, white males. Others attribute it to the hiring of Edward Felsenthal as Editor-in-Chief in 2017. Some view it as a response to the decision by 30 States and nearly 63 million people who decided to elect our first Misogynistic President in 2016, a man who was not only the ultimate representation of not only the straight, white male, but also a symbol for division across racial, gender, and ethnic lines.
Whatever the reason, or possibly a combination of all three above, Time really started upping it’s game. 2016, for example, included features on: Hillary Clinton, Muhhammed Ali, Simone Biles, Colin Kapernick, Fidel Castro, and Gretchen Calrson, with more to come. In 2019, Greta Thunberg was named “Time Person of the Year” for her work encouraging students to drop out of school and advancing the theory that teenagers do, in fact, know more than adults. 2020 showed an even bigger advance, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris winning “Person of the Year”, proving that Time had finally caught on to modern times.
Sadly, that just wasn’t going to last long. Recently Time announced that actor Elliot Page would be appearing on it’s most recent cover, signaling a return to it’s tradition of featuring straight, white males almost exclusively.
With so many newsworthy stories surrounding us right now, it’s a wonder that Time decided to set us back 50 or 60 years with something so bland as the personal reflections of a straight, white male. What about the absolute bombshells coming out about racism in the British Royal Family? Or the great work that the Biden/Harris administration is doing along our southern border? Anyone hear about that $2 Trillion COVID Relief that’s going to the brave workers of the American Federation of Teachers so they can continue to stay home where it’s safe? Apparently the Time didn’t.
Look, how much should we really care about which story the Time decides to run? A case can be made that we should care not at all, and simply enjoy the fine reporting and journalistic work that continues to come from the New York based magazine. But this mentality simply ignores the micro-aggression of putting yet another straight, white male on the cover. It’s not enough to simply write compelling and thought provoking stories. Time owes it to their readers, and in fact the entire world, to be a beacon of diversity and inclusion. How can you do this, or claim to be a leader in journalism, when you continue to ignore the most relevant stories in preference to yet another cover on a straight, white male, particularly one who is an actor, and hasn’t had a relevant film role in over a decade? Is that really news?
Here’s to hope that Time turns it back around and starts giving us the diverse and interesting stories we want. If next week’s cover is yet another story about Donald Trump, George Bush, or some other straight, white male, we’ll have our answer. Fingers crossed they don’t’ let us down.