The following is from an editorial in The New York Times:
Maybe the hysteria about Rolling Stone's August issue is heat-wave induced. That's the only charitable explanation for the stampede of critics who have been accusing Rolling Stone editors of trying to turn Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of the Boston Marathon bombing, into a rock star merely by putting him on the issue's cover. (Never mind the word "monster" right there in big type.)
The drumbeat became so feverish that Walgreens, CVS and a few other stores have refused to sell the magazine. The mayor of Boston hyperventilated that it "rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment."
Stores have a right to refuse to sell products because, say, they are unhealthy, like cigarettes (which Walgreens and CVS, oops, both sell). Consumers have every right to avoid buying a magazine that offends them, like Guns & Ammo or Rolling Stone.
But singling out one magazine for shunning is over the top. Magazine covers are not endorsements.
Janet Reitman's long article describes the way a boy portrayed by friends as "just a normal American kid" could go so wrong. And the headline on the cover reads : "How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster."
One thing seems certain. Thanks to the outcry on social media and the reactions of a few timid merchants, this issue should sell quite well.