Since his unexpected death on June 26, Michael Jackson has dominated much of the nation’s news coverage.
Howard Kurtz introduced a discussion of Jackson’s death on CNN’s Reliable Sources with an unflattering clip reel, showing cable media lights musing over the death, the question of the Jackson children’s paternity, the purported secret rooms in his house, his painkiller usage, and so on.
Kurtz’s verdict in a phrase: “This, in my view, is getting out of control.”
Indeed, according to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, cable news devoted 93 percent of its airtime to Jackson in the two days immediately following his death. While the drumbeat has let up since, today—the day of his funeral—the King of Pop is being given a saturation send off.
And as important as Michael Jackson was—for his beloved music, for being a metaphor of America’s racial cipher, for the cautionary tale he represented—we all honestly know that his death is not the most important story in the world. There’s unrest in China, Iran, and Honduras. Our president just notched his first major foreign policy achievement, inking a treaty with Russia that could reduce the amount of the world’s nuclear weapons by nearly 30 percent. Congressional committees are at work reshaping health care, the largest sector of our economy. The depth and duration of this recession remains unknown, and the effectiveness of the stimulus meant to shorten it is up for debate.
Given what we could be watching, all the Jackson coverage, according to New York Daily News television critic David Hinckley, means are networks are swimming with the tide, bringing viewers “News Viewers Actually Watch,” and not “News That Actually Matters.” He points to some numbers to make the case:
The night Jackson died, a CBS Jackson special and Jackson editions of ABC’s “2-0/20” and NBC’s “Dateline” drew 21.3 million total viewers.That’s not an off-the-charts thriller. A “CSI: Miami” rerun last week drew 8.2 million.
But conversely, President Obama’s much-hyped health care special drew just 4.7 million.
So when the audience demand for a story like Jackson’s death is there—and it is—how much of it should journalists cover? To what extent should major outlets try to set the news agenda, as opposed to follow popular demand? In short, how much Jackson is too much Jackson?
Michael Jackson lied as easily as he danced, reinvented history as easily as he composed melodies that have incredible staying power, and singularly repulsed us as he thoroughly captured our (forgiving) hearts. Michael Jackson is the dichotomy that keeps on giving, and one can be sure that, with his totally predictable yet still sad passing, he is destined to displace Elvis, Marilyn and Judy in many a heart. Is this hero worship justified or is it merely a symptom of a culture gone awry? Some day the historians will weigh in but, for now, I hope his children can live a more grounded life than he ever managed to pull off. That might be his true legacy.
#1 Posted by former journalist, CJR on Tue 7 Jul 2009 at 07:06 PM
Seems not all news outlets are wacko for Jacko. Front-page stories on the Jackson memorial in today's New York Times: 0 (a very subdued, below-the-fold photo teases coverage on A14). Front-page stories on the disappearance of plot in porn videos in today's New York Times: 1.
#2 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Wed 8 Jul 2009 at 09:39 AM
First, I don't think we should underestimate the culturally connective power that things like Jackson's death embody. (Kelefa Sanneh captured that power quite well, I thought, in a recent New Yorker.) Sure, Jackson's death wasn't news, by any strict definition. And yet news's function isn't just to inform; it's also to bring people together, to define and foster communities of interest. Jackson's death--and its coverage--absolutely did that.
I'd still agree with the majority of media critics on this one: the Jackson coverage was--or, more precisely, became--excessive. But I don't think the matter was simply one of general Jackoverload, or what have you, or of the do your job/keep your job paradox Edward Wasserman articulated recently. It's a bit more complex than that, I think--something that comes down to the varying roles that news's platforms can and should play in terms of news delivery.
In short, I don't think we can answer the question above without considering the differences among news platforms. Web, print, radio, and cable news outlets are quite different beasts, suited for quite different specimens of news, information, and discourse. While the Web and (to a lesser extent) print are well suited to the kind of broad information dissemination we tend to think of when we think of "the news"--put all the news you know out there, but organize it so that readers can not only sift through it themselves, but also have a sense of what's most important for them to learn at a given moment--cable and radio have no such luxury. They're constrained by the limitations of time (which is to say, by their own immediacy); rather than present a curated grouping of information and conversation for their audiences--among which those audiences can graze at will--the broadcast outlets have to decide, at every moment, what singular subject to present.
The flip side of that reality, as I've long thought, is that TV simply isn't well-suited to catch-all information-sharing, the kind that the Web, in particular, does so well.
TV is, however, extremely good at hosting discussions and examinations, and generally providing context for news stories. Think Charlie Rose, think Frontline, think the less vitriolic of the Sunday roundtables. Think the better moments of discussion-driven cable news broadcasts. At their best, these serve not just as extensions of the news we read in print and online, but as elevations of it.
The Jackson coverage was, in all its excess, a good (if rather crude) example of the kind of division of labor that is, to my mind, ideal given our current resources--one in which broadcast outlets capitalize on their strengths, focusing on conversation and context and the kind of lengthy narrative that can, when done well, make for such compelling journalism. And it was one that we saw play out pretty organically: this past week, cable provided, basically, blanket coverage of Jackson's life and death, while other outlets generally covered the news of his death and moved on. (Check out PEJ's breakdown-by-platform of the Jackson coverage for a striking graphical representation of that division.) If TV journalism would embrace its own strength--and if the chicken-and-egg combination that is news executives and their audiences would embrace it, as well--then I think we'd end up with a pretty efficient and, dare I say, illuminating new journalistic ecosystem.
Does that mean that cable's wall-to-wall coverage of Jackson was warranted, given everything else going on in the world this past
#3 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 8 Jul 2009 at 12:19 PM
This maudlin outburst is not, of course, about Michael Jackson. It is first of all about the desire of ordinary (vitally young) people to affiliate emotionally with celebrity (Remember Diana) and wallow in the self-satisfaction of crossing racial and gender and, indeed, legal boundaries.
Here is proof again of how much the audience shapes the news we provide. We in the the "objective" media cheer for Americans in sport or war, until the sport or war disappoints. We cheer for hometown teams, or pounce when they disappoint. We fly by our own independent values only when the audience is divided in its biases or so lacking in information that it has none.
#4 Posted by Max Frankel, CJR on Wed 8 Jul 2009 at 01:27 PM
Gee, Max, it's too bad the masses are so stupid and self-centered that they don't know enough to care about what you care about. I'm sure there's a cushy job as a pundit waiting for you somewhere, if you don't have one already.
#5 Posted by Marilyn Ferdinand, CJR on Wed 8 Jul 2009 at 06:13 PM
What about the relief that people got from all the bad news dominating the media on war, health care, climate change, and of course, the economy. I think the Jackson coverage was a distraction and an opportunity to think about an event that does not involve their daily lives. Jackson coverage will be gone, but our concerns will still be there.
#6 Posted by Bunni Roberts, CJR on Wed 8 Jul 2009 at 10:18 PM
I thought the coverage was excessive in the extreme, but it usually it is these days when someone of pop culture status passes on.
I did a quick review of the L.A. Times coverage two days after Jackson's death and was appalled at the column inches it devoted to the story. You can check out the breakdown at http://bit.ly/vTg0B.
#7 Posted by Dan Hutson, CJR on Sat 11 Jul 2009 at 02:01 AM