On April 3, 2006, the cover of Time Magazine read "Be Worried, Be Very Worried" introducing an article on Global Warming. One year later the cover of Time Magazine announced its "Global Warming Survival Guide.” A Time Global Warming cover story in 2001 showed an egg in a frying pan. Time Magazine’s Global Warming cover stories even date back nearly two decades. In 1989 a story called “Planet of the Year, Endangered Earth” was a featured story on a Time Magazine cover.

However, in just the past 12 months, Time has used the issue of global warming on seven separate occasions in its cover stories. The magazine's latest controversial cover story compares the climate change issue to a war and shows a picture of the Iwo Jima Memorial except that the American Flag is replaced by a tree. The Time Magazine cover has infuriated military veterans and every American who respects the Iwo Jima War Memorial, a Memorial that is dedicated to the 6000 soldiers that lost their lives as well as the 28,000 soldiers that were casualties in the brutal World War II battle.

Time Magazine managing editor Richard Stengel is quoted as answering the widespread public criticism of the magazine cover as follows: “One of the things we do in the story is we say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate change. The cover art was part of the publication’s global warming advocacy and a way of forcing readers to pay attention.”

However, unlike the editor of Time Magazine, the veterans of Iwo Jima see the cover issue in a much more objective way. Donald Mates, (Iwo Jima veteran) told the Business & Media Institute that using that photograph for that cause was a "disgrace." "It's an absolute disgrace," Whoever did it is going to hell. That's a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor. The Second World War we knew was there. There's a big discussion. Some say there is global warming, some say there isn't. And to stick a tree in place of a flag on the Iwo Jima picture is just sacrilegious".

Also, consider the Time Magazine editor's comments in a speech he gave on April 21, 2008 at the University of Mississippi as part of the third annual Stuart J. Bullion Lecture. These comments should give every Time Magazine subscriber and reader a reason to pause. Stengel said: " I didn’t go to journalism school, But this notion that journalism is objective, or must be objective is something that has always bothered me, because the notion about objectivity is in some ways a fantasy. I don’t know that there is as such a thing as objectivity.”

As for journalistic standards, Stengel told the audience : “I don’t even know what rules there have been all along in journalism. There are rules we kind of observed by tradition, but it’s not like you know the legal code or being a doctor with the way you treat people. We sort of make it up as we go along and I think that is what will continue to happen.”

The truth is that the Society of Professional Journalists does have a standard of practice in their code of ethics. This industry standard of practice includes a journalistic requirement to: 1 Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others. 2. Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. 3. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context and 4. Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.

Of course, for Time Magazine, the entire issue is really all about selling magazines. Forget about journalistic standards of practice, industry code of ethics or objectivity. Do not confuse the magazine's writers or editor with the fact that the Earth has not experienced any warming for the last decade or that in the last twelve months the cooling of the planet has been the most dramatic on record. This is all about their "global warming advocacy" and leveraging profitability from the public's fear from all the climate change hype.

It is also interesting to consider that a global warming agenda was not always a crusade of Time Magazine. Their global warming magazine covers only go back in time into the 1980s. So what was the magazine's climate change agenda in the 1970s? Well, the cover of Time Magazine in June of 1974 is headlined "The Cooling of America" and the article warns of a man-made ice age in the years ahead. Fear was useful in selling magazines back then too even if the outcome of climate change was going to be much colder.

So, Time Magazine’s readers should not be surprised by insensitive, exploitive covers. They certainly should not confuse its articles with objective journalism. In fact, if the planet continues its recent cooling trend, cover stories on a future man-made global ice age will surely soon appear. The truth is that for Time Magazine, its real agenda is to exploit the public’s fear of global climate change for its own increased profitability. Its an agenda that already spans decades. Indeed, its an agenda that may be timeless.

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