Motivation for the Watchtower Society's alterations has not always been the same. During 1981 and 1982 an ad for Johnnie Walker Red scotch whisky appeared in several major magazines, including the September 1982 Readers Digest (certain editions only, p. 37). The ad depicted a red sunset silhouetting a building with two people standing on an elevated porch. It had first been run in the June 29, 1981 U.S. News and World Report, and was copyrighted, according to the liquor companys staff attorney.
Then The Watchtower of September 15, 1982, appeared with the same picture on its cover (slightly modifiedthe Watchtower Societys artist cut off the left edge of the building and removed one of the people from the porch). This misuse of the liquor ad picture was exposed in the October, 1982, issue of Comments from the Friends.
As a result of such publicity the liquor company, Somerset Importers, Inc., contacted Watchtower headquarters through their legal staff. The Society agreed, out of court, to stop using the ad on its cover. So, when the years magazines were reprinted as a bound volume at the end of 1982, the cover of the September 15th issue featured a different picturea landscape showing trees with mountains in the background, predominantly blue instead of red. Foreign language editionsthose printed after the U.S. English editionalso carried the new cover. The Watchtower issue with a liquor ad picture on its cover is now a collectors item.
Compare page 13 of the June 1, 1989, Watchtower with the bound volume reprint of the same magazine. The original issue features a photograph of a married couple over the heading, Gods Word says, Let marriage be honorable. In the bound volume reprinted at the end of the year, a different couples photograph has been substituted. Again, no explanation is offered. And, again, reminiscent of The Commissar Vanishes dictator Josef Stalin's similar altering of pictures and Big Brother in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Amazingly, the average Jehovah's Witness accepts the
altered illustrations without comment and pretends that nothing is wrong
just as did the oppressed populations in Stalin's Soviet Union and in Orwell's
nightmarish novel.
Watchtower Educational Center
in Hawaii
This listing appears among the business tenants of
Mililani Technology Park on that landlord's website at
http://www.planet-hawaii.com/mtp/tenants.htm#Watchtower
Bible & Tract
Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York,
Inc. A multi-national, nonprofit Bible educational
group, the Watchtower will use its new 53,000-square-foot building at MTP for
its Watchtower Educational Center - Pacific. The educational center will be
comprised of four conference rooms and one auditorium
equipped |
Copyright © 1998 by David A. Reed, all rights reserved. Clipart copyright © by Corel Corp., Metro Creative Graphics, Inc., Metro ImageBase, Inc., T/Maker, Zedcor, Inc., et al., used with permission.