Jackson Acquitted On All Accounts

From Associated Press:

A jury acquitted Michael Jackson on Monday of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch - exonerating the pop star who insisted he was the victim of mother-and-son con artists and a prosecutor with a vendetta.

Somehow, that verdict doesn't surprise me.

Two things struck me about this trial. The first is that if you've got money, you can get away with child molestation, or murder, in our justice system. You can hire the best attorneys--along with their muscular legal staff--to plant the most outrageous doubts in the jury's minds. A mother-and-son con artist scam? Come on! Do you really think I'm going to believe that? However, when you've got the money, you can hire the biggest lawyers, and the scores of investigators to dig up whatever dirt you can to demonize and destroy your opponent. O.J. Simpson got away with murder. Michael Jackson got away with child molestation. That's the corrupting influence of money in our legal system. Had O.J. and Michael been given a public defender, do you think either would have gotten off as they did?

The second thing that struck me was the media frenzy of this trial. It became the next "Trial of the Century" where media pundits and bombastic analysts will certainly be comparing this trial with the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Both involved black celebrities. Both involved especially heinous crimes. Both exposed the American public to the extremely rich, luxurious celebrity lifestyles of Beverly Hills. Both celebrities had their eccentricities--O.J. liked to play golf at midnight on his estate, Michael Jackson is just eccentric. Did we really need to have 2000 journalists covering this trial? Did we really need to know about Jackson's missing his court appearance because of a backache? Turn on the television, and there's the latest Michael Jackson story of what he had for lunch during today's court session--simultaneously broadcasted on CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC ABC News, and Entertainment Tonight. It is totally outrageous.

But the media frenzy is also about the corporate media. The duty of the corporate media isn't to produce news that the American public needs to know. The duty of the corporate media is to produce news stories which will increase their market share, and their bottom line profits. Complicated news stories such as Iraq, the Downing Street Memo, the sputtering economy--those stories don't generate ratings. They are too complicated to explain, and the public would have to think and reflect on those stories. There's no profit in reporting those stories. So there's no reason to report them. Michael Jackson's molestation trial is big news. It is easy to report, and place in a 30-second sound and video clip. You don't have to think about complicated issues, unless you believe that Jackson's backache was complicated enough to allow him to miss his court date. It's got celebrities, sleaze, sex, and money--what more could you ask for in generating fat profits for media conglomerates?And so the Michael Jackson trial became the equivalent of eye candy for the media. It makes pretty television with sacchary-sweet fluff for news details that have no bearing to the public. It is American journalism at its absolute worst.