H-E-B won't be selling a roiling Rolling Stone

When the latest issue of Rolling Stone hits newsstands Friday, Texans won't find copies at any of the more than 300 H-E-B stores across the state.

Similar to decisions by Walmart, CVS and other national retailers, the locally based grocer on Thursday confirmed it won't sell the issue amid a social media-driven firestorm over the magazine's decision to feature Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover.

“I think we did it before Walmart,” spokeswoman Dya Campos wrote in an email.

H-E-B, she added, removes products from its shelves “all the time for various reasons.”

Campos did not say whether customer reaction played a factor in H-E-B's decision. But public outrage over the issue spilled onto the company's Facebook page starting about noon Wednesday.

“Over the years, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars” at H-E-B, wrote one Facebook user. “If you sell the disgusting terrorist (Rolling Stone) magazine in your store, I will no longer shop with you.”

On its cover, Rolling Stone features a close-up of a scruffy Tsarnaev that looks more like a young Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison than the 19-year-old who pleaded not guilty last week in the April 15 bombing. He appeared in court with his arm in a cast and his face swollen.

Numerous newspapers and magazines published the same image before, but in this context it sparked criticism that Rolling Stone had given the bombing suspect celebrity treatment.

“If H-E-B or any other retailer just ignored this, it could have been a misstep,” said Charlene Davis, a marketing professor at Trinity University. “They're probably not losing a lot of actual sales in terms of that magazine. At the same time, this is a way of reinforcing that (H-E-B) listens to consumers, and we don't always feel that way.”

The company, she added, might have risked alienating customers who defend Rolling Stone on the basis of free expression. However, she noted their opinion is most likely outnumbered by the group of shoppers offended by the magazine.

Also, any retailer's decision not to sell the issue won't impact the current political climate, said Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“There's always a bit of manufactured hysteria around these things,” he said. “The chance that (a retailer's decision) could have an effect on the intellectual and political level of the culture is pretty close to zero.”

Jensen did not consider H-E-B's decision censorship, since no law compels a retailer to carry any particular publication or every issue of a publication it actually sells.

Still, he said major retailers could harm society if they ever decide to ban publications with controversial political material.

“We need the privately held media to provide a wide range of information, opinion (and) analysis for that healthy, democratic society,” Jensen said. “So, if the major retailers that carry publications routinely refuse to carry political magazines, that would be a serious impediment to achieving a meaningful democracy.”