USA · Bias: Mixed / opinion-heavy
Newsweek Publishing LLC (Dev Pragad & Johnathan Davis)
First published February 17, 1933 by a former Time editor, Newsweek spent decades as one of America's two dominant news magazines. Its fall from grace was almost as dramatic as its rise: after a 2010 collapse in print advertising, its owner sold the entire magazine for a symbolic $1 to audio pioneer Sidney Harman, who simply took on its debts in exchange. It briefly stopped print publication in 2012, went through a chaotic string of subsequent owners, and relaunched in 2018 as the independently owned Newsweek Publishing LLC. It now runs a far higher volume of digital, SEO-optimized, and outside-contributor content than its glossy print era ever did.
In its May 9, 2005 issue, Newsweek reported, based on a single anonymous source, that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet during questioning. The goal was legitimate accountability reporting on detainee treatment after 9/11 — but the sourcing wasn't solid enough to survive scrutiny. The story sparked deadly riots across Afghanistan and other Muslim-majority countries; at least 15 people died in the unrest that followed. When Newsweek's own source admitted he might have been mistaken, the magazine retracted the story on May 16, 2005 — a devastating reminder of how much real-world weight a single unverified sentence can carry once it's printed under a trusted name.