 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 26, 2009
Thursday's untimely death of Michael Jackson, the bestselling pop singer of the '70s and '80s, translated into saturation obituary coverage. The networks' newscasts covered the investigation into his demise; the global outpouring of grief from his fans; his chaotic personal, financial and legal troubles; the assessment of his peers in the music industry; and his artistic legacy as a peerless songwriter, dancer and singer. His death was such big news that it eclipsed all other stories. It occupied 95% of the three-network newshole (57 min out of 61). No other development was deemed worthy of coverage by a correspondent. In the past year only the inauguration of President Barack Obama has been a more heavily covered Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 26, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ALL JACKSON ALL THE TIME Thursday's untimely death of Michael Jackson, the bestselling pop singer of the '70s and '80s, translated into saturation obituary coverage. The networks' newscasts covered the investigation into his demise; the global outpouring of grief from his fans; his chaotic personal, financial and legal troubles; the assessment of his peers in the music industry; and his artistic legacy as a peerless songwriter, dancer and singer. His death was such big news that it eclipsed all other stories. It occupied 95% of the three-network newshole (57 min out of 61). No other development was deemed worthy of coverage by a correspondent. In the past year only the inauguration of President Barack Obama has been a more heavily covered Story of the Day.
All three newscasts led off from Los Angeles with audio clips from the EMS 911 call describing the fatal emergency as Jackson's physician Conrad Murray tried to revive his patient's breathing. The doctor's BMW automobile has been impounded by police, who want to re-interview him. The coroner completed a three-hour autopsy on Jackson's corpse. "All indications point to an individual in the grip of a very serious drug problem," ABC's Mike von Fremd surmised, quoting unidentified police sources that Demerol and OxyContin had been detected. He traced Jackson's use of pain medication back 25 years to burn injuries suffered while shooting a commercial for Pepsi-Cola. CBS' Bill Whitaker, too, reported that he had been injected with Demerol but he cited TMZ.com and The Sun, a London tabloid newspaper, as his sources--not the cops.
NBC's Lee Cowan cautioned that it may take as long as eight weeks for toxicology tests to be completed but that did not stop him quoting his in-house physician Nancy Snyderman. Her long-distance diagnosis involved the strenuous rehearsal regime Jackson had undertaken for a run of concerts in London: "It looks like there is a perfect storm of eating disorder, probably anorexia, narcotic abuse and sheer exhaustion. When that happens it takes a phenomenal toll on the lungs, on the circulatory system." ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson consulted many unidentified experts. They predicted "there will be many other drugs involved; he probably was a walking polypharmacy."
THE WHOLE WORLD MOURNS NBC's Rehema Ellis and ABC's David Muir both started their coverage of the grief of Michael Jackson's myriad of fans at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. That is where his family singing group, The Jackson 5, first found fame. CBS went even further back, sending Terrell Brown (no link) to Jackson's birthplace in Gary Ind. The death was a multimedia phenomenon, NBC's Ellis pointed out: MTV and BET were running Jackson music videos non-stop on cable TV; Facebook and Twitter were overloaded with condolence messages; AT&T text message traffic spiked; amazon.com sold out its stock of Jackson CDs; his songs topped the charts on iTunes; and pop memorabilia was posted for sale on eBay.
ABC included Dana Hughes' coverage of mourning in Nairobi and Nick Schifrin on grief in Islamabad in Muir's report. NBC had Dawna Friesen survey the global scene from London. She introduced Ian Williams in Japan: "Visual imagery plays a huge role in popular culture here. This is the land of the comic book and the videogame. Jackson's exciting, often outlandish, videos helped shape their culture." NBC's Friesen ended her report in Piccadilly Circus where a flash mob of fans danced to Thriller, "an impromptu street party, a massive multicultural, multiracial singalong."
HOW MESSED UP WAS MICHAEL? None of the three newscasts could resist replaying the mess that the 50-year-old Michael Jackson had made of his adult life. ABC's Jim Avila predicted a "huge custody battle" over his three children, even after he paid his ex-wife Debbie Rowe, the mother of two of them, "to give them up." NBC's Mike Taibbi reminded us that there had been "a long sequence of allegations" that Jackson was "a molestor of young boys." Taibbi noted that none was ever proven and that a psychiatrist testified that Jackson "does not qualify as a pedophile, just a regressed ten-year-old." ABC's Avila pointed out that Jackson paid "hush money to more than one teenage boy" yet those confidentiality agreements may now be voided by his death. CBS' Ben Tracy noted that Jackson's "penchant for the opulent and the oddball led him to the brink of financial ruin." As recently as 2005 he was $300m in debt with annual expenditures--including legal fees--exceeding his income by an unMicawberish $30m.
IF YOU MISSED A STEP… Michael Jackson rarely granted interviews but over his career he had sat down frequently enough with ABC News for anchor Charles Gibson to introduce an In the 1st Person montage of soundbites. "Being around, you know, everyday people and stuff I feel strange. They see me differently. They will not talk to me like they will the next door neighbor," was one clip. A later quote: "The thing I like most about being on stage is making people happy." As for his musical training, he recalled that his father "practiced us with a belt in his hand and if you missed a step…"
Quincy Jones, the producer of such hits as Off the Wall and Thriller, was interviewed by both CBS anchor Katie Couric and NBC anchor Brian Williams. To Williams, Jones called Jackson "a young man with an old soul…a victim, a very brilliant, genius, talented victim." The abiding mystery of Jackson for Jones was to "go to his house and I would always see pictures of blond blue-eyed kids, paintings all over the house. I never understood that." Talking to CBS' Couric, Jones recalled finding a Tommy Bailey song, She's Out of My Life, about a man's difficult relationship with his ex-wife. "I was saving it for Sinatra but I gave it to Michael. And every time Michael sang it he cried."
CBS' Couric also interviewed Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, who signed The Jackson 5. He remembered the audition where he saw a child "doing everything, James Brown steps, the splits, the movements and all of that. It was just so captivating--and when I heard his voice I thought the voice did not go so well with all the dances he was doing." So The Jackson 5 was given bubble gum to sing. Yet "he was a man beyond his years. When he did that song Who's Loving You? the Smokey Robinson song, he sounded like he had been living that song for fifty years."
JACKSON’S ARTISTIC LEGACY The task of assessing Michael Jackson's artistic legacy was assigned to Lester Holt on NBC, to Bill Weir on ABC and to Michelle Miller (no link) on CBS.
Given that the pop star's career spanned decades, genres and disciplines, it is no surprise that they emphasized different aspects of his virtuosity. CBS' Miller focused on dance: "His voice may have launched his career," she argued "but it was his moves that made him a legend." She traced his influences back to James Brown and Bob Fosse and saw them live on in Justin Timberlake, Usher and Beyonce.
ABC's Weir chose Jackson's breakthrough medium: "With a childhood falsetto dropping with grown-up soul, he grew up on televsion but it was music television that sent his adult career soaring. MTV did not feature many black artists until Beat It proved too popular to ignore."
NBC's Holt traced Jackson's musical stylings. His disco CD Off the Wall established Jackson "as a hit making solo artist. His style no longer just soul, he was bridging music's unspoken racial divide…Thriller boasted seven #1 records and made Michael Jackson the undisputed King of Pop."
All three newscasts led off from Los Angeles with audio clips from the EMS 911 call describing the fatal emergency as Jackson's physician Conrad Murray tried to revive his patient's breathing. The doctor's BMW automobile has been impounded by police, who want to re-interview him. The coroner completed a three-hour autopsy on Jackson's corpse. "All indications point to an individual in the grip of a very serious drug problem," ABC's Mike von Fremd surmised, quoting unidentified police sources that Demerol and OxyContin had been detected. He traced Jackson's use of pain medication back 25 years to burn injuries suffered while shooting a commercial for Pepsi-Cola. CBS' Bill Whitaker, too, reported that he had been injected with Demerol but he cited TMZ.com and The Sun, a London tabloid newspaper, as his sources--not the cops.
NBC's Lee Cowan cautioned that it may take as long as eight weeks for toxicology tests to be completed but that did not stop him quoting his in-house physician Nancy Snyderman. Her long-distance diagnosis involved the strenuous rehearsal regime Jackson had undertaken for a run of concerts in London: "It looks like there is a perfect storm of eating disorder, probably anorexia, narcotic abuse and sheer exhaustion. When that happens it takes a phenomenal toll on the lungs, on the circulatory system." ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson consulted many unidentified experts. They predicted "there will be many other drugs involved; he probably was a walking polypharmacy."
THE WHOLE WORLD MOURNS NBC's Rehema Ellis and ABC's David Muir both started their coverage of the grief of Michael Jackson's myriad of fans at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. That is where his family singing group, The Jackson 5, first found fame. CBS went even further back, sending Terrell Brown (no link) to Jackson's birthplace in Gary Ind. The death was a multimedia phenomenon, NBC's Ellis pointed out: MTV and BET were running Jackson music videos non-stop on cable TV; Facebook and Twitter were overloaded with condolence messages; AT&T text message traffic spiked; amazon.com sold out its stock of Jackson CDs; his songs topped the charts on iTunes; and pop memorabilia was posted for sale on eBay.
ABC included Dana Hughes' coverage of mourning in Nairobi and Nick Schifrin on grief in Islamabad in Muir's report. NBC had Dawna Friesen survey the global scene from London. She introduced Ian Williams in Japan: "Visual imagery plays a huge role in popular culture here. This is the land of the comic book and the videogame. Jackson's exciting, often outlandish, videos helped shape their culture." NBC's Friesen ended her report in Piccadilly Circus where a flash mob of fans danced to Thriller, "an impromptu street party, a massive multicultural, multiracial singalong."
HOW MESSED UP WAS MICHAEL? None of the three newscasts could resist replaying the mess that the 50-year-old Michael Jackson had made of his adult life. ABC's Jim Avila predicted a "huge custody battle" over his three children, even after he paid his ex-wife Debbie Rowe, the mother of two of them, "to give them up." NBC's Mike Taibbi reminded us that there had been "a long sequence of allegations" that Jackson was "a molestor of young boys." Taibbi noted that none was ever proven and that a psychiatrist testified that Jackson "does not qualify as a pedophile, just a regressed ten-year-old." ABC's Avila pointed out that Jackson paid "hush money to more than one teenage boy" yet those confidentiality agreements may now be voided by his death. CBS' Ben Tracy noted that Jackson's "penchant for the opulent and the oddball led him to the brink of financial ruin." As recently as 2005 he was $300m in debt with annual expenditures--including legal fees--exceeding his income by an unMicawberish $30m.
IF YOU MISSED A STEP… Michael Jackson rarely granted interviews but over his career he had sat down frequently enough with ABC News for anchor Charles Gibson to introduce an In the 1st Person montage of soundbites. "Being around, you know, everyday people and stuff I feel strange. They see me differently. They will not talk to me like they will the next door neighbor," was one clip. A later quote: "The thing I like most about being on stage is making people happy." As for his musical training, he recalled that his father "practiced us with a belt in his hand and if you missed a step…"
Quincy Jones, the producer of such hits as Off the Wall and Thriller, was interviewed by both CBS anchor Katie Couric and NBC anchor Brian Williams. To Williams, Jones called Jackson "a young man with an old soul…a victim, a very brilliant, genius, talented victim." The abiding mystery of Jackson for Jones was to "go to his house and I would always see pictures of blond blue-eyed kids, paintings all over the house. I never understood that." Talking to CBS' Couric, Jones recalled finding a Tommy Bailey song, She's Out of My Life, about a man's difficult relationship with his ex-wife. "I was saving it for Sinatra but I gave it to Michael. And every time Michael sang it he cried."
CBS' Couric also interviewed Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, who signed The Jackson 5. He remembered the audition where he saw a child "doing everything, James Brown steps, the splits, the movements and all of that. It was just so captivating--and when I heard his voice I thought the voice did not go so well with all the dances he was doing." So The Jackson 5 was given bubble gum to sing. Yet "he was a man beyond his years. When he did that song Who's Loving You? the Smokey Robinson song, he sounded like he had been living that song for fifty years."
JACKSON’S ARTISTIC LEGACY The task of assessing Michael Jackson's artistic legacy was assigned to Lester Holt on NBC, to Bill Weir on ABC and to Michelle Miller (no link) on CBS.
Given that the pop star's career spanned decades, genres and disciplines, it is no surprise that they emphasized different aspects of his virtuosity. CBS' Miller focused on dance: "His voice may have launched his career," she argued "but it was his moves that made him a legend." She traced his influences back to James Brown and Bob Fosse and saw them live on in Justin Timberlake, Usher and Beyonce.
ABC's Weir chose Jackson's breakthrough medium: "With a childhood falsetto dropping with grown-up soul, he grew up on televsion but it was music television that sent his adult career soaring. MTV did not feature many black artists until Beat It proved too popular to ignore."
NBC's Holt traced Jackson's musical stylings. His disco CD Off the Wall established Jackson "as a hit making solo artist. His style no longer just soul, he was bridging music's unspoken racial divide…Thriller boasted seven #1 records and made Michael Jackson the undisputed King of Pop."
