Enough With the Jacko Media Coverage! Here's Why

For its new Question of the Day feature over at Editor & Publisher's main blog, we asked: Is the press overplaying the death of Michael Jackson? The question produced a good number of responses, even as the coverage -- right or wrong -- continued with little let up. Nearly all hit the over-coverage hard.

Commenters mainly stuck to the extent of coverage, not the blatant misinformation and hyperbole, such as comparing Jackson to Jackie Robinson (MTV: partly segregated for one year, Baseball: Fully segregated for 70 years) or suggesting that he was the first black pop star to gain wide white audience (decades after the super-popular Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and dozens of other examples). Or, more importantly, glossing over the, shall we say, unsavory, relationships with young boys.

My view: younger fans can rightly accuse many oldsters for not quite "getting" MJ's influence. On the other hand, many younger fans are very weak in the historical perspective department. I say this as a former editor at Crawdaddy which covered Michael throughout the 1970s.

Anyway: To read all of the comments, go to the Pub here. Below I present some of the views already there.
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Commenters at E&P:

--Yes, they're overplaying his death: but with the 24/7 news cycle, the TV press, with the print journos in tow, overplay almost any story, especially those that have a high "fluff" factor. To convey real news requires time, contextualization, and a seriousness that runs counter to the info-tainment paradigm. So, what better than a celebrity death? It's easy, it's cathartic, and has little real meaning in the greater scheme of things.

--MSNBC: Silent on Iran this past weekend, strike one. Olbermann in shirtsleeves getting breathless over Jackson, strike two.

--Yes! There are a lot of important things going on in the world and the media isn't reporting on them. It's hard to find news on anything else.

--Considering he is the best known artist in the world, I would say no. This deserves more attention than Jon and Kate's divorce.

--We didn't even run it in our newspaper. We are delivered by mail the next day, so we could have gotten it in. But Jackson doesn't rate any story in a small, western Nebraska town. Anyone who cared watched all those network specials anyway. We focus on hyper-local, not hyper-ridiculous.

--Sad! Let's take our hats off for five minutes....say a couple of nice things and move on....all in all, not that important!

--Whoa, wait. Michael Jackson died? They haven't announced it even once on HGTV.

--Michael Jackson died? 5 million mothers of pre-teen boys let out a collective sigh of relief.

--Downright disgraceful. Jackson's death unlikely will impact few outside of his family and business associates short of another "celebrity" death. The swoon by the mainstream media is not only sickening, it is another sign of the death of a free press and it's impending transition into all tabloid all the time. It is a crying shame the impacting news has to take a backseat or disappear altogether.

--So I ask this question for those making news judgments: Most significant death of the week -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson or Neda Agha Soltan? (I can tell you which one will get the most eyeballs and therefore revenue. Will history agree?)

--I would like to say, that first, one death is not anymore significant or better than anyone else's. Let's please be rational here while we talk. Second, whether you like it or not, the man was a global icon, despite his faults. Not only that, but his death came as a massive shock, and there maybe reports that he wasn't treated properly like he should have been.

--Michael Jackson was as much a creature of the media as a performer, and the coverage reminds me of Dr. Frankenstein mourning his creation.

--Leave it to these same editors, who convicted the man in the court of public opinion, to milk the cash cow one last time as they pay overdue respect to a progenitor.

--Overplayed compared to what? Iran? Health care reform? Cap and trade? Darfur? The collapse of the banks? Yes. Laci Peterson? The missing girl in Aruba? No. At least Michael Jackson was someone people recognized.

--It is IMPOSSIBLE to overplay this story. Michael Jackson was THE most famous person on Earth! In every part of the globe, people knew and loved him. He was the most talented performer the world has ever seen, and probably ever will see. The other news stories -- health care reform, Iran, the economy, Gov. Sanford, etc. -- aren't going anywhere and will still be news in a few days.

--How many drug overdoses in LA yesterday? How many had live in personal doctors? Why is opium still growing in Afghanistan?

--All the TV coverage was fine for a while, now it is getting on my last nerve. I want to know what is going on in Iran, will we get a public option , can we do any thing to rid the world of the crazy North Korea idiot before he blows up the world. Its Jackson all the time all day.

--Have refrained from posting until now however, with the continued front line coverage of this I have to wonder. Why didn't the headlines read as they should, "Accused Pedophile taken to hospital in cardiac arrest"? "Michael Jackson, who has been accused multiple times of inappropriate contact with young boys, was found dead at his rented home today." Nothing more needed to be said; he lost all right to any hero worship after the first incident.

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Greg Mitchell's latest book is "Why Obama Won." He was executive editor at the legendary Crawdaddy for nearly all of the 1970s.

Comments

[Grulg]

SO?! You can cover anything else you wanna. This is important-but it will be over in a couple of days. You can go back to covering Mark Sanford whenever ya wanna. No one is stoppin' you.

[Durango]

Stationing reporters around the world to cover the social, historical and political context of stories costs money.

And would interfere with the Corporation's bottom line.

How much easier to give "opinions" on something everyone and no one knows anything about.

And way cheaper.

[PrinceHal]

But the guy is DEAD -- that's the story! Just like all the rest of us when our time comes, he's never coming back!.

It is DEATH we are stepping back for here, every bit as much as it is Michael Jackson. And we always understand death just a little better when it happens to someone we think we "know." .

And especially when it happens to someone so many have puzzled over, about whom we've heard and felt so much, positive and negative. Especially when it's someone who has been treated so kindly by the Great Distributor of Talent, and so badly by the Great Distributor of Success, who gave him much more of it than he could handle.

And what a story he was when alive! Is there a more self-contradictory personality we've followed through more incredible transformations for virtually his entire life?

Let Michael Jackson's rendezvous with death alone, I say. Let the press mis-handle it as much as it mis-handles other stories, many seemingly of much greater import. For-instance, the ongoing story of the current president of the United States, a man almost as self-contradictory as Michael Jackson.

[pfrogger]

I can't believe what I'm hearing here.
We're supposed to be the smart ones.
Who cares what the entertainment TV/print MSM do? They are irrelevant. They're not real journalists. They are entertainment hacks under the guise of journalism. They misinform, lie, cheat, or fail to cover important stories. They are, as someone else said, crack addicts. You don't actually listen to crack addicts as factual sources of information do you? So why listen to these hacks.
So let them run Jackson stories for the next week. I don't care. Only a great fool watches that tripe anyway. Let the masses tune in and be misinformed again. If they're foolish enough to tune into these charlatans as credible information, they deserve the dumbing down they get.

Sadly, HuffPo is guilty of this, albeit to a smaller extent. In the entertainment section is appropriate. But as a headliner on the the main page is not. But then HuffPo has also put the epic farce known as the Jon and Kate saga on the main page. Why is it there? Seriously? It's a useless and meaningless show with useless and meaningless people. Putting that stuff on the main page is ridiculous. It's not news, it's a joke. Which is what HuffPo will become if they continue with this intellectual-lite drivel.

[Imzadi]

Fanned and faved!

[raker]

It isn't really about Michael Jackson. The press does this every time someone famous dies. People seem to enjoy having the TV tell them what they think and feel.

The over-the-top pageant of inappropriate and artificial emotion that follows a celebrity death seemed to start with Princess Diana. It didn't quite take with Ronald Reagan, when we learned the answer to this question: what if they gave a national week or mourning and nobody came.

Like everything else today, the hype is in the service of corporate interests. GE did a half-hour infomercial for Dateline last night all about Michael Jackson, under the deceptive title The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. There's lots of money to be made from manufacturing grief and mourning over a dead celebrity.

[Zebro]

First of all even if Jackson hadn't passed away we were already being inundated with Farah Fawcett's death and she, with all due respect, hasn't been a top tier celebrity in decades. And Jackson was has been a late night joke and sorry to say a has been for at least 15 years.

Iran is going through a change that might completely alter the future of the middle east and it was pushed aside by Fawcett and Jackson's passing. Not to mention the number of people being murdered over there. Shameful.

The media is like a crack addict when it comes to famous people dying or getting caught in a scandal. They literally can't help themselves from going WAY over the top in their coverage. I can understand giving them 10 or 15 minutes during every hour but to completely put every other major news story on the back burner is a gigantic dereliction of their responsibility.

[Manx]

Talk about over the top. There hasn't been such saturated news coverage since the assassination of President Kennedy. It's sad that so many people are manipulated by the media. They tell us which celebrities we should like and those we should mourn and the celebrity culture follows right along like good little sheep. Of course, Michael Jackson was a great talent and pop icon and his demise is certainly newsworthy. But the media coverage, in general, has been embarrassingly over the top, most of it gossip and speculation.
What a homogenous society we've become.

[IQ]

If you're above a certain age, or if you've chosen to be isolated socially and culturally
the passing Michael Jackson is at best deserving of a mention. I chose long ago not to isolate myself in such a manner. Indeed my age fits into the demo that viscerally responds to the memories that Mr Jackson created in our culture for 40+ years.

When it comes to the coverage; I am of the internet age. My curiosity can be quenched because I want to be aware of the whole world, and once again, I don't want to isolate myself in any way.

I was raised to walk and chew gum at the same time.

[TheBrimeCow]

I know people who are still seeking out news stories about Michael Jackson. This is what we do. I remember when Jackie Onasis, Princess Diana, and Frank Sinatra died (not to mention Reagan, Ford and James Brown). Those times too, there were people who weren't all tabloid junkies and who cared about serious news, who wanted more about these peoples' deaths.

Certain celebrities become specters haunting our lives. They are associated with memories of childhood, adolescence or elsewhere and form an image in our minds inextricably linked to that place. That person's existence becomes part of our paradigm and when they die, that paradigm is forced to change ever so slightly and people feel the need to dwell on it for a spell. This can also be true of more serious news stories (9/11 and the Berline Wall being two examples).

Regardless, the reality is that Michael Jackson's death emotionally effects a large number of people. As a result, the news media is going to continue to cover it until folks have had their time to absorb it and the appetite settles down.

Would I rather people were getting this worked up over Iran? Yes. But they aren't right now, and I'm going to choose not to harsh on them for it or on the news media for feeding a general demand.

If for no other reason than I don't want to eat crow in the event I become a blubbering, inconsolable ball of neurosis when Billy Corgan dies.

[Nitehawk]

I just skimmed to CNN and they were featuring footage of a guy who had a MJ puppet. Enough already, I'm going to turn it on the Weather Channel.

[Chernynkaya]

For me, there are two important stories- one of which is a possibly vital story- that came out of Jackson's passing.

Firstly, it might help crystallize the nature of our media, which as the author shows is the tabloidization of ALL news. Everything becomes sensationalized, with little reflection and little restraint.

Secondly- and this is the one that scares me- is that the internet is unable to handle mass traffic. If there every is a national disaster and an urgent need for information and communication, we learned how many sites crashed.

As far as MJ's death, it was a one day story for me. I have lost respect for all the news on TV.

[benjaminblue]

All of this coverage seems to be a parody of the already farcical "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" catch phrase that originated in 1975, during the first season of Saturday Night Live. Yes, we know by now that Michael Jackson has passed and is still gone. It's time to move on. We've had more than enough distractions over the past eight years, in particular, as Mr. Bush was allowed to hide behind, among other things, the eight days of continuous coverage devoted to Saint Ronnie's passing.

There are so many more situations with significant impact and implications on which we should be concentrating; we need to focus on developments demanding our vigilance.

[TheCommons]

The coverage has been way over the top. To be sure he was an iconic performer. But that doesn't call for wall-to-wall coverage.

[omobob]

I agree but you have to admit, it’s better than Kate and Jon or LaLohan. Yes?

[Chernynkaya]

You really can't compare them in terms of their talent and impact to Michael Jackson, true. But you only die once. Unfortunately, Jon and Kate, et al, are with us on a daily basis for years to come. And it's not like the media have been covering MJ unless he is on trial.

[pizzmoe]

It was a sad day to be sure, but I got MJ fatigue about an hour into the coverage. However, this too shall pass.

[KnowzyRowzy]

Tuff Tit ty, we got at least three more days of non-stop coverage!!!!!!