Michael Jackson, Twitter, TMZ and the Big C - Credibility
They always say that things happen in threes. Earlier this week, we lost Ed McMahon who we all remember from Johnny Carson and those Publisher’s Clearing House commercials. On Thursday, news about Farrah Fawcett’s loss to cancer hit early in the morning. The day was all abuzz on Twitter with a few random Farrah tweets throughout the day, and then, just before 6pm eastern time (I am in NYC), the floodgates opened. TMZ reports Michael Jackson being rushed to the hospital! Michael Jackson had cardiac arrest! The next fifteen minutes were insanely tweeted, until tweets stated “TMZ reports Michael Jackson dead at 50.” Fail whales due to overload kept anchoring us, and I, like many others were a bit annoyed because I wanted to know when a credible news source was going to confirm. Moments later, the LA Times reported his death. I cannot explain how rapid this all happened. This was all taking place over the course of a half hour, from the time of the first reports that MJ was being rushed by helicopter to the hospital to the moment that legit news sources have confirmed his death as many do not trust TMZ to be a credible source of information.
Since when is an online gossip tabloid a credible news source? TMZ is owned by Time Warner, and we tend to forget that piece of information - obviously they are a well-connected crew. The other thing is even if we know that the gossip site is telling the truth, we don’t want to admit it because it seems lowbrow and shallow. After much thought, I realized this: TMZ are specialists in celebrity journalism, no matter how shady they may seem. Here in America, we do put our celebrities on a very high pedestal and they become a part of our daily lives. Mainstream media is our habit, and we tend to put our trust into the NY Times, CNN, and other channels simply because they cover “real” news stories. But after Michael Jackson’s death was reported, turn on any channel and open up any paper yesterday and we have saturated the story. The protests in Iran take a backseat to entertainment. Even on CNN, the lead story is all about Michael with everything else being sidebars. While this is an entertainer that had a tremendous impact on many people’s lives, does it warrant 24/7 coverage? Is it more important than social injustice, war, and financial crisis? All of this reminds me of the classic 1976 movie, Network. If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it highly. Here’s the trailer:
Network (1976) movie trailer
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