“Everyone lies, but that’s okay because nobody listens”

Television “news” has plumbed new depths of wretched excess with their Michael Jackson coverage. They know it. We know it. They know we know. Therefore even establishment eunuchs like Howard Kurtz know they must address the question of “too much Michael Jackson?”

The Jackson extravaganza was the focus on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”. Kurtz, as is his practice, ensured that that the program offered plenty of excuses and few criticisms.

Perhaps the most striking thing was that Kurtz managed to stack his show with people who actually thought the nonstop coverage was appropriate. He brought on a TV critic from the Baltimore Sun who argued that Jackson was a pop culture icon of such enormous magnitude that the public mourning demanded coverage.

Kurtz also interviewed Don Lemon, the CNN anchor who spearheaded CNN’s all Michael all the time tabloid orgy. Nor surprisingly, he had no problem with the coverage.

The whole thing became an exercise in unchallenged media self-justification. The media’s own numbers showed the public thought the coverage was overblown. Yet, Kurtz chose to do a show on the subject without including an strong proponent of that viewpoint.

What Kurtz needed was someone who was an unalloyed critic of the coverage. Some one like this guy:

Jacko-mania tarnished media credibility

The mainstream media may have covered the bejabbers out of the death of Michael Jackson, but they hardly covered themselves in glory.

A real critic would also have challenged the lame excuses that blame the public for the MSM’s follies. Michael Jackson draws ratings, said Kurtz’s guests, so CNN was “just giving the public what it wants.”

The numbers do not support this thesis, but it passed unchallenged in CNN’s echo chamber. Eighteen channels carried the memorial service and it drew only 30 million viewers. Despite all the hype, the vast majority of Americans took a pass on the spectacle.

There is no doubt that the Jackson story is perfect for cable news. The key factor is not its popularity; it is the low cost. CNN, Fox et. al. could bump their miniscule ratings on the cheap. Cable’s addiction to tabloid stories is a question of economics not of overall popularity.

Cable news is, of course, a business. Tabloid stories help short-term profits. That is a fair and honest explanation for the Michael Jackson coverage. But journalists claim they have a higher calling than mere commerce. It is impossible to reconcile their “blame the audience” rational with their frequent appeal to “news standards” and “editorial judgment”.

What happened to the fearless “deciders” who determined what was news? When convenient, the press wants to act like lemmings chasing after a handful of obsessed viewers. They expect viewers to forget such tawdry behavior when they start their well-worn sermons about the value and values of the professional journalist.

Kurtz and his guests referenced Princess Diana’s death as an earlier example of this sort of pop culture tsunami that the media is compelled to cover. No one addressed a key point made by Maureen Orth about that dirgy Digasm:

From the mixed barone for both gays and lesbians where I was interviewingI could see a dozen dried bouquets which had been stuffed into the iron grill beside a bank in an homage to the fallen princess. The man I was interviewing then gave me a memorable lesson in the power of celebrity. The bouquets, he said, were a way to get the neighborhood in on the act.

How much public grief is real and how much is created by the massive media attention?

These media orgies resemble a fire whose updraft creates ground winds that fan the flames even higher. CNN was not just covering a story; they making the story appear larger by covering it at such length. That is a topic a real media critic would love.

Howard Kurtz? Not so much.