Joan Juliet Buck - Asma Al-Assad Article

Asma Al-Assad Article

In March 2011 Vogue published a profile that Buck wrote of Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, describing her as "glamorous, young and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies." The piece caused a furor within foreign policy circles and media websites, including The Atlantic, which attacked it as an ill-timed "puff piece" that ignored human rights abuses under Syria's Ba'athist regime. In May 2011 the article was removed from Vogue's website. The magazine had previously said that the piece took "more than a year" to cultivate. Buck's contract was not renewed.

Buck subsequently wrote an article about the assignment in Newsweek in which she described the encounter with the Assads in fuller scope, emphasizing that she had not wanted to write the story. Like the original piece, Buck's follow-up generated controversy; in Maclean's, Barbara Amiel said that at the time Buck wrote her original article, Syria was already on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.