It
was five years ago today that twelve jurors unanimously acquitted Michael
Jackson on various charges of child molestation, conspiracy and providing
alcohol to a minor. It is difficult to know how history will remember the
Michael Jackson trial. Perhaps as the epitome of western celebrity obsession. Perhaps as
a 21st century lynching. Personally, I think it will be remembered as one of
the most shameful episodes in journalistic history.
It's not until you find yourself digging through newspaper
archives and re-watching hours of TV coverage that you truly understand the
magnitude of the media's failings. It was industry-wide. No doubt, there were
certain reporters and even certain publications and TV stations that overtly
favored the prosecution, but many of the media's shortcomings were
institutional. In a media obsessed with soundbites, how to you reduce eight
hours of testimony into two sentences and remain accurate? In an era of rolling
news and instant blogging, how do you resist the temptation to dash out of the
courtroom at the earliest opportunity to break news of the latest salacious
allegations, even if it means missing a slice of the day's testimony?
Looking back on the Michael Jackson trial, I see a media out of
control. The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion and misinformation is
almost beyond comprehension. Reading the court transcripts and comparing them
to the newspaper cuttings, the trial that was relayed to us didn't even
resemble the trial that was going on inside the courtroom. The transcripts show
an endless parade of seedy prosecution witnesses perjuring themselves on an
almost hourly basis and crumbling under cross examination. The newspaper
cuttings and the TV news clips detail day after day of heinous accusations and
lurid innuendo.
It was November 18th 2003 when 70
sheriffs swooped on Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. As soon as news of the
raid broke, news channels abandoned their schedules and switched to 24 hour
coverage. When it emerged that Jackson was accused of molesting young cancer
survivor Gavin Arvizo, the boy who famously held the singer's hand in Martin
Bashir's 'Living With Michael Jackson', the media went into overdrive. Networks
were so obsessed by the Jackson scandal that a terrorist attack in Turkey went
almost entirely unreported, with only CNN bothering to broadcast George Bush and
Tony Blair's joint press conference about the disaster.
All three major networks immediately
set about producing hour-long specials on the Jackson case, apparently
undeterred by the fact that nothing was yet known about the allegations and
prosecutors weren't answering questions. CBS dedicated an episode of 48 Hours Investigates to the arrest, while NBC's Datelineand ABC's 20/20 also rushed out Jackson specials.
Within two days of the Neverland raid, and before Jackson had even been
arrested, VH1 announced a half-hour documentary
called 'Michael Jackson Sex Scandal'.
Daily Variety described
the Jackson story as "a godsend for... media outlets, particularly cable
news channels and local stations looking to pump up Nielsen numbers in the
final week of the all-important November sweeps."
Daily Variety was right.
Celebrity-oriented news shows saw figures spike when the Jackson story hit.
Viewing figures for Access
Hollywood were up 10%
on the previous week. Entertainment
Tonight andExtra both achieved season best audience
numbers and Celebrity Justice also enjoyed an 8% rise.
Newspapers reacted just as
hysterically as TV stations. 'Sicko!' shrieked the New York Daily News. 'Jacko: Now
Get Out Of This One' goaded the New
York Post.
The Sun - Britain's
biggest newspaper - ran an article titled 'He's Bad, He's Dangerous, He's
History'. The piece branded Jackson an 'ex-black ex-superstar', a 'freak' and a
'twisted individual' and called for his children to be taken into care.
"If he weren't a pop idol with piles of cash to hide behind," it
said, "he would have been picked up years ago."
Encouraged by the audience boosts
the Jackson scandal had produced, media outlets made it their mission to milk
the case for all that they could. Entertainment
Weekly's Tom Sinclair
wrote, "Media mavens, from the tackiest tabloid reporter to the nattiest
network news anchor, are in overdrive scrambling to fill column inches and
airtime with Jacko scoops and talking heads."
"Pressure on news people is enormous," attorney Harland
Braun told Sinclair. "So lawyers you've never heard of wind up on television
talking about cases that they have no connection to."
Sinclair added, "And not just lawyers. Everyone from doctors,
writers, and psychiatrists to convenience-store clerks who once waited on
Jackson are weighing in on TV and in print."
While the media was busy badgering a host of quacks and distant
acquaintances for their views on the scandal, the team of prosecutors behind
the latest Jackson case was engaging in some highly questionable behavior - but
the media didn't seem to care.
During the Neverland raid District Attorney Tom Sneddon - the
prosecutor who unsuccessfully pursued Jackson in 1993 - and his officers
breached the terms of their own search warrant by entering Jackson's office and
seizing hoards of irrelevant business papers. They also illegally raided the
office of a PI working for Jackson's defense team and lifted defense documents
from the home of the singer's personal assistant.
Sneddon also appeared to be tampering with fundamental elements of
his case whenever evidence came to light which undermined the Arvizo family's
claims. For instance, when the DA found out about two taped interviews in which
the entire Arvizo family sang Jackson's praises and denied any abuse, he
introduced a conspiracy charge and claimed they'd been forced to lie against
their will.
In a similar instance, Jackson's
lawyer Mark Geragos appeared on NBC in January 2004 and announced that the
singer had a 'concrete, iron-clad alibi' for the dates on the charge sheet. By
the time Jackson was re-arraigned in April for the conspiracy charge, the
molestation dates on the rap sheet had been shifted by almost two weeks.
Sneddon was later caught seemingly trying to plant fingerprint
evidence against Jackson, allowing accuser Gavin Arvizo to handle adult
magazines during the grand jury hearings, then bagging them up and sending them
away for fingerprint analysis.
Not only did the majority of the
media overlook this flurry of questionable and occasionally illegal activity on
the part of the prosecution, it also seemed perfectly content to perpetuate
damning propaganda on the prosecution's behalf, despite a complete lack of
corroborative evidence. For example, Diane Dimond appeared on Larry King Live days after Jackson's arrest and spoke
repeatedly about a 'stack of love letters' the star had supposedly written to
Gavin Arvizo.
"Does anyone here... know of the existence of these
letters?" asked King.
"Absolutely," Dimond replied. "I do. I absolutely
know of their existence!"
"Diane, have you read them?"
"No, I have not read them."
Dimond admitted that she'd never even seen the letters, let alone
read them, but said she knew about them from "high law enforcement
sources". But those love letters never materialized. When Dimond said she
'absolutely knew' of their existence she was basing her comments solely on the
words of police sources. At best, the police sources were parroting the
Arvizos' allegations in good faith. At worst, they'd concocted the story
themselves to sully Jackson's name. Either way, the story went around the world
with not a shred of evidence to support it.
It was over a year between Jackson's arrest and the beginning of
his trial and the media was forced to try to pad the story out for as long as
they could in the interim. Aware that Jackson was bound by gag order and
therefore powerless to respond, prosecution sympathizers started leaking
documents such as Jordan Chandler's 1993 police statement. The media, hungry
for scandal and sensationalism, pounced on them.
At the same time, allegations sold to tabloid TV shows by
disgruntled ex-employees in the 1990s were constantly re-hashed and presented
as news. Small details of the Arvizo family's allegations would also
periodically leak.
While most media outlets reported these stories as allegations
rather than facts, the sheer amount and frequency of stories connecting Jackson
to ugly sexual abuse, coupled with his inability to refute them, had a
devastating effect on the star's public image.
The trial began in early 2005 with
jury selection. Asked by NBC about prosecution and defense jury
selection tactics, Dimond said the difference was that prosecutors would be
looking for jurors who had a sense of 'good versus evil' and 'right and wrong'.
No sooner had the jurors been
selected than Newsweek was trying to undermine them, claiming
that a middle class jury would be unable to fairly judge a family of lower
class accusers. In an article titled 'Playing the Class Card' the magazine
said, "The Jackson trial may hinge on something other than race. And we
don't mean the evidence."
As the trial kicked into gear, it became quickly apparent that the
case was full of holes. The prosecution's only 'evidence' was a stack of
heterosexual porn magazines and a couple of legal art books. Thomas Mesereau
wrote in a court motion, "The effort to try Mr. Jackson for having one of
the largest private libraries in the world is alarming. Not since the dark day
of almost three quarters of a century ago has anyone witnessed a prosecution
which claimed that the possession of books by well known artists were evidence
of a crime against the state."
Gavin Arvizo's brother, Star, took the stand early in the trial
and claimed to have witnessed two specific acts of molestation but his
testimony was completely inconsistent. Regarding one alleged act, he claimed in
court that Jackson had been fondling Gavin, but in a previous description of
the same incident he told a wildly different story, claiming Jackson had been
rubbing his penis against Gavin's buttocks. He also told two different stories
about the other alleged act on two consecutive days in court.
During cross examination Jackson's
lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, showed the boy a copy of Barely Legal and repeatedly asked if it was the
specific edition Jackson had shown him and his brother. The boy insisted that
it was, only for Mesereau to reveal that it was published in August 2003; five
months after the Arvizo family had left Neverland.
But this information went almost entirely unreported, the media
focusing on the boy's allegations rather than the cross examination which
undermined them. Allegations make good soundbites. Complex cross examination
does not.
When Gavin Arvizo took the stand, he claimed that Jackson had
instigated the first act of molestation by telling him that all boys had to
masturbate or else they would turn into rapists. But Mesereau showed under
cross examination that the boy had previously admitted his grandmother made
that comment, not Jackson, meaning that the whole molestation story was
predicated on a lie.
Under cross examination the boy severely undermined the
prosecution's conspiracy charge by claiming he'd never felt afraid at Neverland
and he'd never wanted to leave. His accounts of the alleged molestation also
differed from his brother's.
Unfortunately for Jackson, Gavin Arvizo's cross examination was
all but ignored as newspapers giggled and gossiped about what became known as
'pajama day'. On the first day of the boy's direct examination Jackson slipped
in his shower, bruised his lung and was rushed to hospital. When Judge Rodney
Melville ordered a bench warrant for Jackson's arrest unless he arrived within
an hour, the singer sped to the courthouse in the pajama trousers he'd been
wearing when he was rushed to hospital.
The photographs of Jackson in his pajamas went all over the word,
often with no mention of Jackson's injury or the reason he was wearing them.
Many journalists accused Jackson of faking the entire event in order to gain
sympathy, although sympathetic is the last word you'd use to describe the
media's reaction.
The incident didn't stop the media
from sending Gavin Arvizo's lurid allegations around the world the following
day. Some outlets even ran the boy's testimony as fact rather than conjecture.
"He Said If Boys Don't Do It They Might Turn Into Rapists - Cancer Boy
Gavin Tells Court of Jacko Sex," wrote The
Mirror.
But the boy's cross examination was
another story. It went almost completely unreported. Instead of stories about
Gavin Arvizo's lies and the two brothers' contradictory allegations, newspaper
pages were filled with snarky opinion pieces about Jackson's pajamas, even
though 'pajama day' had been days previously. Thousands of words were dedicated
to whether or not Jackson wore a wig and the Sun even ran an article attacking Jackson
for the accessories he pinned to his waistcoats every day. It seemed like the
press would write anything to avoid discussing the boy's cross examination,
which severely undermined the prosecution's case.
This habit of reporting lurid
allegations but ignoring the cross examination which discredited them became a
distinct trend throughout Jackson's trial. In an April 2005 interview with Matt
Drudge, Fox columnist Roger Friedman explained,
"What's not reported is that the cross examination of these witnesses is
usually fatal to them." He added that whenever anybody said anything salacious
or dramatic about Jackson, the media 'went running outside to report on it' and
missed the subsequent cross examination.
Drudge agreed, adding, "You're not hearing how witness after
witness is disintegrating on the stand. There is not one witness, at least
lately, that hasn't admitted to perjuring themselves in previous proceedings
either in this case or in some other case."
This alarming trend of ignoring cross examination was perhaps most
apparent in the media's coverage of Kiki Fournier's testimony. Under direct
examination by the prosecution, Fournier - a Neverland housekeeper - testified
that when at Neverland children often became unruly and she had sometimes seen
children so hyperactive that they could, feasibly, have been intoxicated. The media
scurried outside to report this apparent bombshell and missed one of the most
significant pieces of testimony in the entire trial.
Under cross examination by Thomas Mesereau, Fournier said that
during the Arvizo family's final weeks at Neverland - the period during which
the molestation supposedly happened - the two boys' guest room had been
constantly messy, leading her to believe they'd been sleeping in their own
quarters all along - not Michael Jackson's bedroom.
She also testified that Star Arvizo had once pulled a knife on her
in the kitchen, explaining that she did not feel it had been intended as a joke
and that she thought he'd been 'trying to assert some sort of authority'.
In a devastating blow to the prosecution's increasingly hilarious
conspiracy charge, Fournier laughed at the idea that anybody could be held
prisoner at Neverland Ranch, telling the jurors that there was no high fence
around the property and the family could have walked out at any time 'with
ease'.
When Gavin and Star's mother Janet Arvizo took the stand Tom
Sneddon was seen with his head in his hands. She claimed that a videotape of
herself and her children praising Jackson had been scripted word for word by a
German man who barely spoke English. In outtakes she was seen singing Jackson's
praises then looking embarrassed and asking if she was being recorded. She said
that had been scripted too.
She claimed she'd been held hostage at Neverland even though log
books and receipts showed that she'd left the ranch and returned on three
occasions during the period of 'captivity'. It became apparent that she was
currently under investigation for welfare fraud and had also been falsely
obtaining money on the back of her son's illness, holding benefits to pay for
his cancer treatment when he was already covered by insurance.
Even the most ardent prosecution
supporters had to admit that Janet Arvizo was a disastrous witness for the
state. Except Diane Dimond, who in March 2005 seemed to use Janet Arvizo's
welfare fraud (she was convicted in the wake of Jackson's trial) as roundabout
proof of Jackson's guilt, signing off a New
York Postarticle with the gob smacking line, "Pedophiles don't
target kids with Ozzie and Harriet parents."
Watching their case crumble before their eyes, the prosecution
applied to the judge for permission to admit evidence of 'prior bad acts'.
Permission was granted. Prosecutors told the jury they would hear evidence of
five former victims. But those five prior cases turned out to be even more
laughable than the Arvizos' claims.
A parade of disgruntled security guards and housekeepers took the
stand to testify that they had witnessed molestation, much of it carried out on
three boys; Wade Robson, Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin. But those three boys
were the defense's first three witnesses, each of them testifying that Jackson
had never touched them and they resented the implication.
Moreover, it was revealed that each of these former employees had
been fired by Jackson for stealing from his property or had lost a wrongful
termination suit and wound up owing Jackson huge amounts of money. They'd also
neglected to tell the police when they supposedly witnessed this molestation,
even when questioned in connection with Jordy Chandler's 1993 allegations, but
subsequently tried to sell stories to the press - sometimes successfully. The
more money on the table, the more salacious the allegations became.
Roger Friedman complained in an interview with Matt Drudge that
the media was ignoring the cross examination of the 'prior bad acts' witnesses,
resulting in skewed reporting. He said, "When Thursday started, that first
hour was with this guy Ralph Chacon who had worked at the Ranch as a security
guard. He told the most outrageous story. It was so graphic. And of course everybody
went running outside to report on it. But there were ten minutes right before
the first break on Thursday when Tom Mesereau got up and cross examined this
guy and obliterated him."
The fourth 'victim', Jason Francia, took the stand and claimed
that when he was a child, Jackson had molested him on three separate occasions.
Pushed for details of the 'molestation', he said Jackson had tickled him three
times outside his clothes and he'd needed years of therapy to get over it. The
jury was seen rolling their eyes but reporters including Dan Abrams heralded
him as 'compelling', predicting that he could be the witness who put Jackson
behind bars.
The media repeatedly claimed that
Francia's allegations had been made in 1990, leading audiences to believe that
the Jordy Chandler allegations were predated. In actuality, although Jason
Francia claimed that the acts of molestation occurred in 1990, he didn't report
them until after the media storm over Chandler's claims, at which point his
mother, Neverland maid Blanca Francia, promptly extracted $20,000 from Hard Copy for an interview with Diane Dimond and
another $2.4million in a settlement from Jackson.
Moreover, transcripts from police interviews showed that the
Francia had repeatedly changed his story and had originally insisted that he'd
never been molested. Transcripts also showed that he only said he was molested
after police officers repeatedly overstepped the mark during interviews.
Officers repeatedly referred to Jackson as a 'molester'. On one occasion they told
the boy that Jackson was molesting Macauley Culkin as they spoke, claiming that
the only way they could rescue Culkin was if Francia told them he'd been
sexually abused by the star. Transcripts also showed that Francia had
previously said of the police, "They made me come up with stuff. They kept
pushing. I wanted to hit them in the head."
The fifth 'victim' was Jordy Chandler, who fled the country rather
than testify against his former friend. Thomas Mesereau said in a Harvard
lecture later that year, "The prosecutors tried to get him to show up and
he wouldn't. If he had, I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he
told them it never happened and that he would never talk to his parents again
for what they made him say. It turned out he'd gone into court and got legal
emancipation from his parents."
June Chandler, Jordy's mother, testified that she hadn't spoken to
her son in 11 years. Questioned about the 1993 case, she seemed to suffer from
a severe case of selective memory. At one point she claimed she couldn't
remember being sued by Michael Jackson and at another she said she'd never
heard of her own attorney. She also never witnessed any molestation.
When the prosecution rested, the
media seemed to lose interest in the trial. The defense case was given
comparatively little newspaper space and air time. The Hollywood Reporter, which had
been diligently reporting on the Jackson trial, missed out two whole weeks of
the defense case. The attitude seemed to be that unless the testimony was
graphic and salacious - unless it made a good soundbite - it wasn't worth
reporting.
The defense called numerous fantastic witnesses; boys and girls
who had stayed with Jackson time and again and never witnessed any
inappropriate behavior, employees who had witnessed the Arvizo boys helping
themselves to alcohol in Jackson's absence and celebrities who had also been
targeted for handouts by the accuser. But little of this testimony was relayed
to the public. When DA Tom Sneddon referred to black comic Chris Tucker as
'boy' during his cross examination, the media didn't bat an eyelid.
When both sides rested jurors were told that if they found
reasonable doubt, they had to acquit. Anybody who had been paying attention to
proceedings could see that the doubt was so far beyond reasonable it wasn't
even funny. Almost every single prosecution witness either perjured themselves
or wound up helping the defense. There wasn't a shred of evidence connecting
Jackson to any crime and there wasn't a single credible witness connecting him
to a crime either.
But that didn't stop journalists and
pundits from predicting guilty verdicts, CNN's
Nancy Grace leading the way. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who had once
represented the Chandler family, stated with certainty on CNN, "He's going to be
convicted." Ex-prosecutor Wendy Murphy told Fox News, "There is no
question we will see convictions here."
The hysteria of the fans outside the courthouse was mirrored by
that of the reporters who secured seats inside, who were so excitable that
Judge Rodney Melville ordered them to 'restrain themselves'. Thomas Mesereau
commented retrospectively that the media had been "almost salivating about
having [Jackson] hauled off to jail."
When the jury delivered 14 'not guilty' verdicts, the media was
'humiliated', Mesereau said in a subsequent interview. Media analyst Tim Rutten
later commented, "So what happened when Jackson was acquitted on all
counts? Red faces? Second thoughts? A little soul-searching, perhaps? Maybe one
expression of regret for the rush to judgment? Naaawww. The reaction, instead,
was rage liberally laced with contempt and the odd puzzled expression. Its
targets were the jurors... Hell hath no fury like a cable anchor held up for
scorn."
In a post-verdict news conference Sneddon continued to refer to
Gavin Arvizo as a 'victim' and said he suspected that the 'celebrity factor'
had impeded the jury's judgment - a line many media pundits swiftly
appropriated as they set about undermining the jurors and their verdicts.
Within minutes of the announcement,
Nancy Grace appeared on CourtTV to allege that jurors had been seduced
by Jackson's fame and bizarrely claim that the prosecution's only weak link had
been Janet Arvizo.
"I'm having a crow sandwich right now," she said.
"It doesn't taste very good. But you know what? I'm also not surprised. I
thought that celebrity is such a big factor. When you think you know somebody,
when you have watched their concerts, listened to their records, read the
lyrics, believed they were coming from somebody's heart... Jackson is very
charismatic, although he never took the stand. That has an effect on this jury.
"I'm not gonna throw a stone at the mom, although I think she
was the weak link in the state's case, but the reality is I'm not surprised. I
thought that the jury would vote in favor of the similar transaction witnesses.
Apparently the defense overwhelmed them with the cross-examining of the mother.
I think it boils down to that, plain and simple."
Grace later stated that Jackson was 'not guilty by reason of
celebrity' and was seen attempting to hound jury foreman Paul Rodriguez into
saying he believed Jackson had molested children. One of Grace's guests,
psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall, leveled personal attacks towards one female
juror, saying, "This is a woman who has no life."
Over on Fox News, Wendy Murphy branded
Jackson 'the Teflon molester' and said that the jurors needed IQ tests. She
later added, "I really think it's the celebrity factor, not the evidence.
I don't think the jurors even understand how influenced they were by who
Michael Jackson is... They basically put targets on the backs of all,
especially highly vulnerable, kids that will now come into Michael Jackson's
life."
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that he thought the 'prior bad acts'
testimony had been 'effective evidence', even though various boys at the heart
of that testimony had taken the stand as defense witnesses and denied ever
being molested. He also claimed that the defense had won because "they
could tell a story, and juries, you know, always understand stories rather than
sort of individual facts."
Only Robert Shapiro was dignified in the face of the verdicts,
telling viewers that they should accept the jurors' decision because the jurors
were from "a very conservative part of California and if they had no
doubt, none of us should have any doubt."
The following day on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer
upheld the notion that the verdict had been influenced by Jackson's celebrity
status. "Are you sure?" she pleaded. "Are you sure that this
gigantically renowned guy walking into the room had no influence at all?"
The Washington Post commented,
"An acquittal doesn't clear his name, it only muddies the water."
Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News ran with the snide headline 'Boy, Oh,
Boy!'
In her final New York Post article about the trial, Diane Dimond
bemoaned the not guilty verdict, saying that it left Michael Jackson
untouchable. She wrote, "He walked out of court a free man, not guilty on
all counts. But Michael Jackson is so much more than free. He now has carte
blanche to live his life any way he wants, with whomever he wants, because who
would ever try to prosecute Michael Jackson now?"
In Britain's Sun newspaper, celebrity rent-a-gob and
talking head extraordinaire Jane Moore penned an article titled 'If the jury
agree Janet Arvizo is a bad mum (and she IS)... How did they let Jackson off?'
It began: "Michael Jackson is innocent. Justice has been done. Or so the
loony tunes gathered outside the courthouse would have us believe." She
went on to question the jurors' mental capacity and dismiss the American legal
system as 'half-baked'. "Nothing and no one truly emerges as a winner from
this sorry mess," she finished, "least of all what they laughably
call American 'justice'."
Sun contributor
Ally Ross dismissed Jackson's fans as 'sad, solitary dick-wits'. Another Sun article, penned by daytime TV
presenter Lorraine Kelly, titled 'Don't forget the kids still at risk...
Jacko's own', overtly labeled Jackson a guilty man. Kelly - who never attended
Jackson's trial - bemoaned the fact that Jackson 'got away with it',
complaining that "instead of languishing in jail, Jackson is now back home
in Neverland." Jackson, she concluded, was "a sad, sick loser who
uses his fame and money to dazzle the parents of children he takes a shine to."
After the initial outrage, the Michael Jackson story slipped out
of the headlines. There was little analysis of the not guilty verdicts and how
they were reached. An acquittal was considered less profitable than a
conviction.
Indeed, Thomas Mesereau said in later years that if Jackson had
been convicted it would have created a 'cottage industry' for the media,
generating a story a day for years to come. Long-running sagas like custody of
Jackson's children, control of his financial empire, other 'victims' filing
civil suits and the long-winded appeals process would have generated thousands
of stories each for months, years, perhaps even decades.
Jackson's imprisonment would have
created a never ending supply of gratuitous headlines; Who is visiting? Who isn't? Is he in solitary
confinement? If not, who are his cellmates? What about his prison wardens? Does
he have a prison pen-pal girlfriend? Can we fly a helicopter over the prison
yard and film him exercising? The
possibilities were endless. A bidding war was raging over who would get the
first leaked images of Jackson in his cell before the jury even began its
deliberations.
A not guilty verdict was not quite
so lucrative. In an interview with Newsweek, CNN boss Jonathan Klein recalled watching
the not guilty verdicts come in and then telling his deputies, "We have a
less interesting story now." The
Hollywood Reporter noted that hastily assembled TV specials
about Jackson's acquittal performed badly and were beaten in the ratings by a
re-run of Nanny 911.
The story was over. There were no
apologies and no retractions. There was no scrutiny - no inquiries or
investigations. Nobody was held to account for what was done to Michael
Jackson. The media was content to let people go on believing their heavily skewed
and borderline fictitious account of the trial. That was that.
When Michael Jackson died the media went
into overdrive again. What drugs had killed him? How long had he been using
them? Who had prescribed them? What else was in his system? How much did he
weigh?
But there was one question nobody seemed
to want to ask: Why?
Why was Michael Jackson so stressed and so
paranoid that he couldn't even get a decent night's sleep unless somebody stuck
a tube full of anesthetic into his arm? I think the answer can be found in the
results of various polls conducted in the wake of Michael Jackson's trial.
A poll conducted by Gallup in the hours after the verdict showed
that 54% of White Americans and 48% of the overall population disagreed with
the jury's decision of 'not guilty'. The poll also found that 62% of people
felt Jackson's celebrity status was instrumental in the verdicts. 34% said they
were 'saddened' by the verdict and 24% said they were 'outraged'. In a Fox News poll 37% of voters said the verdict
was 'wrong' while an additional 25% said 'celebrities buy justice'. A poll by People Weekly found that a staggering 88% of readers
disagreed with the jury's decision.
The media did a number on its audience and
it did a number on Jackson. After battling his way through an exhausting and
horrifying trial, riddled with hideous accusations and character
assassinations, Michael Jackson should have felt vindicated when the jury
delivered 14 unanimous not guilty verdicts. But the media's irresponsible
coverage of the trial made it impossible for Jackson to ever feel truly
vindicated. The legal system may have declared him innocent but the public, on
the whole, still thought otherwise. Allegations which were disproven in court
went unchallenged in the press. Shaky testimony was presented as fact. The
defense's case was all but ignored.
When asked about those who doubted the verdicts, the jury replied,
"They didn't see what we saw."
They're right. We didn't. But we should have done. And those who
refused to tell us remain in their jobs unchecked, unpunished and free to do
exactly the same thing to anybody they desire.
Now that's what I call injustice.
