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BE A HERO & Warn Others of Michael Jackson Scams.
Michael Jackson, Media Greed Haunts King of Pop
by Dr. David Dykes
The zombies may have stalked Michael Jackson on camera in his music video Thriller, but it was the media vampires who hounded him off camera and eventually sucked him dry. For years, the media pundits crucified the man they dubbed Wacko Jacko in order to titillate readers and amuse viewers. Now, they’ve deified him in death for the very same purpose.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about tabloid news, entertainment news or legitimate news shows--as the Jackson coverage shows, there’s little difference between them anymore. They all exist for one purpose, and that is to make money. If what sells is entertainment news, then the Jackson coverage is a good indicator of exactly how dangerous celebrity-driven news has become for our country and our democracy.
The coverage was exhaustive and covered every media platform: online, broadcast, print tabloids, broad sheets, radio. As Variety reported, “TV’s entertainment strips and news mags were preparing Friday for what will likely be weeks--possibly months--of coverage.”
Anticipating higher newsstand sales, many newspapers even rushed to put out special editions to commemorate Jackson’s life and death. “In newspapers like the New York Times, Jackson, 50, took over much of the Friday front page,” reported Reuters. “Forget the political uproar in Iran, which has dominated headlines in recent days or the adulturous [sic] governor of South Carolina, or even the demise of Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett.”
Advertisers smelled a profit in the making. They could use the dead man to sell their products, and Americans would lap it up. Within the first few hours of reporting Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009, cable news channels, which devoted their airtime almost exclusively to the King of Pop, pulled in more than 10 million viewers.
Since then, the networks have provided a steady stream of mindless coverage to fill the airtime. They’ve speculated on Jackson’s will, his estate, who will get custody of his children, his drug usage, his sexual proclivities and his state of mind.
Days after Jackson’s death, I was still hard-pressed to find much in the way of real news about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rising tensions in Iran, the state of the U.S. job market, the worldwide economic crisis or the Obama administration’s latest efforts to advance their health care agenda. Truly enterprising viewers might have been able to glean important tidbits on world politics and the economy from the tiny news crawl running at the bottom of their screen, but even those were overshadowed by the Jackson coverage.
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