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Media ignore the truth about Michael Jackson for the sake of money
by Yvonne Verhagen LegendaryMJ
When reporting about Michael Jackson, for the sake of money, the tabloid press deliberately ignores its ethical responsibilities, most of all the truth is ignored
"I always say to my fans, “Let’s have a tabloid burning. Let’s make a big mountain out of tabloids and just burn them.” ~Michael Jackson
The above words were often mentioned by Michael when talking about his frustration regarding the way he was portrayed by the tabloid press. Still today, they tend to focus on the publishing of negative and sensationalized, often even completely made-up stories about him. When asked about it, they will claim that they provide the public with what it loves to read. What they prefer to ignore, though, is the fact that, first of all, they do have certain ethical responsibilities themselves, both towards the person they’re reporting about and towards the public they serve. For example, they are supposed to report the truth and to treat people and subjects respectfully.
Although Michael claimed to have rhinoceros skin, he must have suffered tremendously from the total lack of integrity that was shown in the stories reported about him by the tabloid press throughout the years. The tabloid press includes the paparazzi that followed Michael literally everywhere he went, and never granted him the privacy he was so badly longing for.
Paparazzi have existed ever since people started to realize that they could make enormous amounts of money by taking candid photographs of celebrities and sell them to tabloid media. They prefer to be called, “celebrity photographers”, and to be defined as “freelance photographers who pursue unique candid photographs of celebrities”. The actual term ‘paparazzi’, though, was derived from the name of a character in the film, La Dolce Vita (1960). In this film, Signor Paparazzo was a photographer who was constantly making efforts to shoot the next big picture, at one point relentlessly photographing a woman who was devastated by personal tragedy. The tactics he used were most similar to the ones used by most freelance celebrity photographers we know in real life, and so, from that time, the latter started to be known as ‘paparazzi’. If talking about only one of them, we call him a paparazzo. Yet, you will hardly see a paparazzo all alone, since they tend to stalk not only celebrities, but also each other. They follow each other into places, hoping to end up in the opportunity of making a ‘much promising’ photograph.
Tabloid publishers are willing to pay a high price for a unique photo of a celebrity, especially if that photo provides ‘truth’ to the information they have of that celebrity. Unfortunately, the tabloid media and the paparazzi have turned out to be not very interested in reporting the truth. Celebrities, in general, have to deal with false rumors, often even completely made-up stories that are spread about them and that will distort their image. Often, they are treated far from respectful. Overall, the behavior of the tabloid media and paparazzi lacks integrity. The main reason for their totally unacceptable, completely unethical behavior is their boundless desire to earn big money. To use Michael’s words;
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
Michael Jackson
Michael, being the most well-known entertainer in the world, has, as we all know, proven to be the tabloids’ and paparazzi’s greatest target, their biggest victim. The number of rumors and lies circulating about him has always been numerous. Even today, with Michael not even able to defend himself anymore, the tabloids still manage to fabricate false stories about him, and if they can’t find something about him that will help them to make money, then they will even remorselessly use his children as their next target.
This was recently exhibited by the Daily Star when they created the rumor of Blanket’s cartoon series “Kill Them All”, which, as it turned out very soon after only little necessary research performed by Ivy from MJJ Community, proved to be one big lie!
Unfortunately, without any research of their own being conducted, the completely made-up story had immediately been copied and pasted (plagiarized!) by numerous tabloid media, such as Daily Mirror, Radar Online, YahooUK, amongst others. After the truth had come out Daily Star removed the offending story but didn’t take responsibility for their totally unacceptable and completely unethical behavior. Other tabloids have done very little to absolutely nothing to correct their shameless acts.
The ethical responsibilities that journalists are supposed to take into account stem from so-called ‘Codes of Ethics’. Many countries have these codes of ethics for journalists, showing a lot of similarities between them. The codes are set up basically for journalists from all media and specialties, including tabloid journalists and paparazzi! Meant to provide a guide for ethical behavior, they are voluntarily embraced by thousands of benevolent journalists. Because they are not legally enforceable, though, it is the responsibility of each individual tabloid journalist and paparazzo how he or she prefers to behave when it comes to showing ethical behavior or integrity!
Unfortunately, throughout almost his entire career, Michael has been the victim of disgusting and unethical behavior of the tabloid media and the paparazzi, who just loved to embarrass him, to tear him apart. From the very first moment he started breaking records, the tabloids started to slander Michael’s name and to distort his image. Nothing was off limits, they were willing to write anything just to attain the highest ratings and, most importantly, to earn big money. They started creating rumors and stories that were often completely made-up. Especially, as Michael was most aware, they would ignore important facts to create their sensational stories. In his 1988 book ‘Moonwalk’ he already wrote;
The part that doesn’t get printed is often the part that would make the printed part less sensational by shedding light on the facts."
Perhaps the most important rule mentioned in codes of ethics is that a journalist should report the truth. He or she is supposed to present all sides of a covered story, based on properly performed research. Also, the journalist is supposed to make sure that headline, news releases and materials, such as photos, videos, and quotations do not misrepresent. Interesting, as well, are the rules to never plagiarize and to always be objective.
Probably, all of us will agree that there is nothing unreasonable or weird in the ethical rules just mentioned. With every sincere thinking and behaving person understanding them, they should not really be difficult to take into account for a journalist conscious of his responsibility and willing to treat people he is reporting about with respect and integrity. However, as history has shown and as is still shown today, when reporting about Michael Jackson, all these rules easily seem to fade away. It has turned out that the tabloid press is willing to stoop very low to get their truth-ignoring, their unethically obtained stories, their complete garbage, sold.
The absurd made up story about Michael sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber is a very well-known one. Allegedly, he thought it would help him to keep feeling and looking young. As Michael explained, the truth was that after he had been burned very badly during the filming of the Pepsi commercial, with the money he and Pepsi had settled for, the Michael Jackson Burn Centre was built and the hyperbaric chamber was a piece of technology used for burn victims. While Michael was looking at that piece of technology, touching it and deciding to go inside, somebody took a picture of him. Later, when the picture was being processed, someone recognized him and made a copy of the picture that was soon spread by tabloid media all over the world, with the lie attached to it. Needless to say, the plagiarized story completely lacked research and truth!
Another, not so well known example of a story being made-up about Michael, lacking of research and truth, and illustrating how desperately the tabloid press was willing to publish just anything about him for the sake of money, can be found in William Van Valin’s book, ‘Private Conversations in Neverland with Michael Jackson’. Van Valin writes about how Michael one day shared with him what had happened after he once went to a drug store, where he bought toothpaste, a toothbrush, shampoo, some razors, and deodorant. It turned out that someone had made a list of the things he had bought and had some psychiatrist draw ridiculous conclusions about Michael’s state of mental health. Just a few days later, a tabloid magazine had used them to evaluate his personality!
Throughout the years the lies and rumors, the made-up stories, most importantly the ignoring of important facts about Michael and his life, became more serious and more damaging. Of course, everyone knows the horrible lies about him being accused of bleaching his skin, because he didn’t want to be black, where in reality, Michael was suffering from the skin disorder, Vitiligo. Still, by January 2009, a British satirical publication, The Daily Squib, was attempting to be funny by publishing the ‘joke’ that Michael was said to be seeking to regain his blackness because of the popularity of black celebrities such as: actors (Will Smith), politicians (President Barack Obama), and sportsmen (Grand Prix winner, Lewis Hamilton). Michael allegedly couldn’t help feeling like he made the wrong decision by undergoing the intensive whitening treatment all those years ago. He was said to be fearful of being left behind now. Also, it was stated that Michael, because of being bankrupt, may now have to remain ‘white’ because he had run out of cash to reverse the de-colorization process he underwent through in the 80s. The truth of Michael’s Vitiligo was relentlessly ignored, the ’joke’ was based on a cruel and unacceptable lie, that totally lacked ethical responsibility and that never should have been spread in the first place! Rather than funny or satiric, I tend to call this a painful example of disgusting and totally misplaced humor.
The bashing of Michael by the tabloid press went so far as to call him a freak, a homosexual, even a child molester! Back in 1993, in their love for money, the tabloids, of course, competed to publish the first article about the Jordy Chandler scandal. Tabloids ruthlessly suggested that Michael’s career was over. It was one of the most misleading, shameful, and unethical attempts to earn money by ruining Michael’s reputation, while at the same time jumping on the bandwagon of negativity that the whole affair created. As usual, plagiarized reports lacked proper research and truth.
In their sensational stories about the Chandler scandal, the tabloid media were deliberately not paying attention to the most striking fact that Evan Chandler, the father of the alleged victim, instead of reporting the alleged molestation, by Michael of his son, to the police first of all (which every healthy- thinking and his child-loving parent would have done!), he went to see a lawyer and concocted a huge money claim! Reporting this would have exonerated Michael in the public’s eye, but that was simply not in the media’s interest, since reporting dirt about him made their story much more interesting, and led them to earn the big money they were aiming for. They deliberately chose to ignore this important fact!
In the aftermath of these ridiculous and false accusations of child molestation Michael, more than ever before, became subject to the paparazzi and tabloid media wanting to tear him apart. Numerous, unethical journalists have fervently been trying to drag Michael down. It became a true media machine that made millions of dollars by perpetuating the notion that he was a freak. They were constantly tripping on him and dehumanizing him. Diane Dimond even built her career upon tearing Michael apart and is still relentlessly continuing to do so today!
In 2003, it was the cruel and manipulative documentary, “Living with Michael Jackson”, of British journalist Martin Bashir, that caused Michael irreversible damage. By that time, the tabloid press had unethically been portraying Michael as a freak for over a decade, and because Bashir’s documentary affirmed existing suspicions, the objectivity of it was not doubted. It should have been, though, since what Bashir did, was make Michael look weird by taking brief glimpses of his life out of context. Because of that, people who didn’t know Michael were disturbed by what they heard him say in the documentary.
Many of Michael’s words were ignored by editing them out of the documentary, therefore completely twisting the truth around. On top of that, Bashir, who narrated the documentary, literally told people that they SHOULD be disturbed by what they saw and heard. Bashir, if anyone, who was supposed to be an objective, ethical responsibly behaving journalist, repeatedly stated that Michael’s statements made him very uncomfortable.
It had clearly from the beginning been Bashir’s intention to humiliate Michael in every possible way in order to win the highest ratings he possibly could. As it turned out he had been editing the material in the most sensationalistic way imaginable. His bashing, subjective documentary totally lacked integrity and was highly responsible for Michael falsely being accused of child molestation once more, in November that year.
As soon as the news about the accusations against Michael broke, news channels immediately abandoned their schedules and started 24-hour coverage on the story. When it turned out that it was Gavin Arvizo, the boy with whom Michael was holding hands in Bashir’s bashing documentary, the media became literally obsessed by the scandal. At that time, with nothing known about the exact allegations, yet, and prosecutors not answering questions, they began producing hour-long specials. The possibility of the allegations being false was not even considered, it was deliberately ignored. Michael was convicted by the media before he had even been arrested. Reports of the scandal were plagiarized as never before, without any research ever being performed. More than ever, for the sake of money, everyone wanted to be the first one to publish the story.
There had never been a trial covered to such an extent as this one against Michael, back in 2005. During the months of the trial, about twenty-two hundred media people were lined up outside the courthouse, everyone wanting to report something new about Michael Jackson.
They were behaving as unethical as to use specific camera angles and lightning to accentuate his nose, his cheeks, his skin tone, just to make him look like the freak they were portraying and, most importantly, to get their twisted and truth-ignoring stories sold.
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With the trial getting started, it soon became clear to those present in the courtroom, that no hard evidence at all could be presented. Yet, the public did not hear anything about that. Since this trial was not televised, the public was only given the information that the media were willing to feed them. News producers encouraged their journalists to focus on the prosecution, therefore of course telling only one side of the story, and Michael was dehumanized in every way possible. Journalists took every opportunity to report the newest dirt about him, just to get high ratings and make big money. They were totally out of control. Whenever a witness said anything salacious or dramatic about Michael, they would run outside to report to the world that things were looking bad for him. However, by running outside, they missed the subsequent cross-examination, that would, without exception, discredit previous lurid allegations! Again, they ignored the truth!
In the early morning of accuser Gavin Arvizo’s examination, Michael was so unfortunate as to slip in his shower and bruise his lung, making it necessary to rush him to the hospital in his pajama trousers. As the judge refused to grant Michael some more time to get properly dressed before appearing at the courthouse, yet, instead threatened to put him in jail and revoke his bail, Michael was forced to appear in his pajama trousers. The media just loved it and named this day ‘Pajama Day’. The photographs of Michael spread all over the world, and, of course, Michael’s bad luck and the reason he was wearing his pajama trousers was completely ignored. Instead, Michael was accused of behaving eccentric. The media were manipulating the moment, as Thomas Mesereau, Michael’s lawyer at the time of the trial, calls it in this interview:
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