Fact Check: Time magazine cover showing Donald Trump as ‘Man of the Ear’ is doctored
Time is a monthly magazine with a unique cover featuring an influential person of that month. Since 1927, Time magazine has been choosing a person of the year, which is the editor’s assessment of the individual who shaped the headlines
Time magazine
Time is a monthly magazine with a unique cover featuring an influential person of that month. Since 1927, Time magazine has been choosing a person of the year, which is the editor’s assessment of the individual who shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse.
Meanwhile, a viral image of Trump with a bandaged ear on the likes of the Time magazine cover with the caption ‘Man of the Ear’ is going viral on social media with the claim that Time Magazine has published this on its cover. This image went viral after the Presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump was shot at in an assassination attempt, while he was speaking at a campaign rally and the bullet pierced the upper part of his ear. The image was shared by several people including Shobha De with the caption “Brilliant’.
Fact Check:
The claim is False. Time magazine did not publish the viral image.
Firstly, there is no date published on the viral image. When we searched for the latest Time magazine covers in the Time magazine vault, we found the July 15 cover featuring Melinda French Gates.
Here is the link to the vault of all the Time magazine covers published since the year 1927.
The incident of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump will be featured on the cover page of Time that is to be published on date August 5, 2024. However, the image of this cover does not match with the viral image. When we searched for Man of the Year or Person of the Year, we found that the choice for the Person of the Year 2023 was Taylor Swift. The person of the year 2024 is yet to be announced.
According to an article published by Time, most fake covers get the logo wrong. It's either too vertically scaled, the word TIME is tracked out too much and the logo is in a different font altogether. It also stated that most of the fake covers include a red border, while not including the thin white border that separates the red from the image.
We also found an online tool named Kapwing which creates fake Time magazine covers. The tool creates a template to create a mockup. Anyone can be named as the person of the year in this template.
Therefore, the image going viral with the Time magazine cover after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump is a doctored one. It was generated using a software named Kapwing. Using this template, anyone can create a Time cover magazine naming anyone as Person of the Year. The claim is False.