THIS IS THE SAME MEDIA - that DUers et al KNOW BETTER than to believe when they slant and skew their reporting on things like the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, our elections and campaigns, rendition and torture, health care, etc. - but somehow - this same media, in the minds of these same viewers and readers - are/were somehow thought to be telling the accurate TRUTH about Michael Jackson. (?!)
:wtf:
Or maybe the welfare-frauding, profit-seeking Arvizo woman was telling the truth - suddenly - for the first time in her life? She didn't come up with the accusations until after Martin Bashir's fucking hit-piece on Jackson was aired by none other than - you guessed it - the lame$tream media. Or, maybe the Sodium Amytal-drugged up boy Jordie Chandler and his greedy Dad who wanted Jackson to build him a house was telling the truth?
Right. . . I'd think people would KNOW BETTER by now. Especially on DU. Pfft.
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Counterpunch: The Persecution of Michael Jackson -The Mad Dog DA and the Mad Dog Media
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When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed. The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out. “Weird, bizarre, eccentric,” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie. Dan Abrams, who made his reputation by convicting O. J. Simpson before the opening arguments of his criminal trial, made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness. Mr. Abrams, a higher up at MSNBC, employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan. Given Abram’s background, why isn’t that considered weird?
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Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial. (For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see
http://www.MediaMatters.com). She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was “devastating."
So devastating that some legal experts said that Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., a vindictive District Attorney, into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.
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Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile. (When the trial opened, a USA Today / CNN / Gallup Poll found that 72% of whites and 51% of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.)
Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement, he can gloat over the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. Sneddon even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.Of course, none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media, out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric, Jackson’s father Joe was MJ’s sole abuser. In the eyes of yesterday’s media, black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence....
Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.”
Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the thirteen-year-old accuser’s stepfather, Evan Chandler, who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son. At one point, he asked Jackson to build him a house. Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal, which is known to induce false memory. Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show, where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience. She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.
None of the media descriptions of Jackson’s career, including a superficial pop-driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper, referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J. C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse. She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel. Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story.”During the 2005 trial, Jackson’s Attorney, Tom Mesereau Jr. got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J. C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1, 2005, that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Jay Leno and others, “even though insurance was paying his bills." Linda Deutsch, one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005. said that Mesereau got the 15 year old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert, a school official that “nothing happened" between Jackson and him.Connie Keenan, editor of Mid Valley News, wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper. She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it. During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal, the mother received $965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “My gut level, she’s a shark. She was after money. My readers were used. My staff was used. It’s sickening."While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother, Janet Arvizo. At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland, Jackson’s ranch, in a hot air balloon. :wtf:
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November of 2006, according to TMZ, Janet Arvizo pled no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles. She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8, 600 in restitution.
During Jackson's trial, Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud. Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150, 000 settlement from J. C. Penny’s. Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies, Nancy Grace, commenting on the death of Jackson, said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the prosecution.”Yet, these journalists insist that their news product is superior to that of bloggers. (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond, a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death)
G. Q. s Mary Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fair didn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings. She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia. Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jurie's decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo, Courtney Hazlett. She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland and as there was to Graceland, because “bad things happened at Never Land." We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures.
All of these opinions seem to indicate that Cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please. This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey.
For years cable, which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury, accused her of murdering her child. Only after her death was it found that she was innocent.
If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough, it didn’t get any better the next day, June 26.
Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to forty charities, on the “Today Show,“ it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children, questions meant to attract the prurient. Again, Diane Dimond was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star. Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning. This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble (that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world....
With the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P. T. Barnum.
MORE...
http://www.counterpunch.org/reed06292009.html