Just a Minute!

If it's wrong to think the MJ coverage excessive, then I'm bad (7/12/09)

     Have the media gone overboard in their coverage of Michael Jackson’s two-week-long death tour?

     Of course they have.

     It’s what the media do when a pop-culture figure dies before the actuarial tables say he should. Toss in a back story that’s salacious and just plain goofy and you’ve got the makings of a summer’s worth of magazine covers. It can’t be long before the pulps suggest that Brangelina are angling to adopt Jackson’s kids.

     What’s truly astonishing is that there are people in the news business who think the coverage has been measured and appropriate. CNN anchor Don Lemon told media commentator Howard Kurtz that only “elitists” think the Jackson coverage has been excessive.

      That’s just silly. Wall-to-wall coverage of these events occurs only because no one has the institutional cojones to say, “This is absurd.” News outlets don’t dare look the other way because success is measured in audience share – even if said audience has been reduced to a large puddle of tapioca.

      Seeking to avoid a debilitating case of pudding brain is not elitism. It’s idealism. And it’s not a bad thing to dream about journalistic integrity, and about journalistic institutions striving to inform and enlighten their audiences rather than pander to them.

JUST A MINUTE! is a weekly essay intended to be read in about 60 seconds. Find more online at seattlepostglobe.org.