Jacko and News Media

Both DOA on June 25

Michael Jackson died on June 25 and the common sense of most American news media died with him.

That’s the only way to explain the endless coverage of Jackson’s death that refuses to stop two weeks after Jackson did. Yes, he was a major and very troubled pop-culture icon. Yes, although the last dozen or so years hadn’t been kind, he was planning a comeback.

Much the same could be said about American news media – once grand, now in sad decline, hoping for a comeback. Since autopsies were performed on Jackson, here’s the beginning of one on news media, with numbers from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

During the week of June 29-July 5, California declared an economic emergency and began issuing IOUs to “pay” its bills. California’s economy is bigger than that of Spain, Canada, Brazil or Russia, for starters, so some might think this an important story, one that would dominate last week’s TV newscasts. But the numbers from Pew say Jackson took 28-30 percent of the airtime on cable and network news, and when you only look at the morning television shows, the number is 56 percent.

Clearly a troubled economy bigger than that that of most nations is not as vital to television news as decades-old film clips, discussions of cosmetic surgery, pedophilia allegations and speculation on who might have really fathered whom.

That collective news media judgment made Jacko the lead newsmaker last week in more than three times as many stories as the president of the United States. President Obama shouldn’t feel too bad – the amount of news hole devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan and the health-care debate together still totaled less than that devoted to Jackson.

Not to mention the Governor of Alaska deciding to step down, con man Bernie Madoff getting a 150-year prison sentence, Minnesota’s Al Franken doing a comedy career lateral and joining the U.S. Senate, and the Republican Sexual Sillies Squad just throbbing with new developments.

Of course, those were just breaking news stories and not the thought-provoking revelations that serious news media can provide. You know – Jackson’s musical legacy, his contribution to race relations, innocent fun with boys in his bed. Important stuff. World-class important stuff.

Clearly much more world-class important than the 16,000 children of the world who die every day from hunger and preventable disease. So we lose a kid every 5.4 seconds or so – how important is that compared to where Michael Jackson will be buried?

And while we do nod to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media’s duties don’t seem to encompass the other 40 or so armed conflicts that scorch around the globe. What is that when compared to reporting what drugs Jackson was taking and where he got them?

Eventually the Jackson story will die and what’s left of the King of Pop will decay and dissolve.

Kind of like the news media, where the process has already started.

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California -- The Rube State

You know you’re old when you remember when California was trendy and progressive.

That’s where all the latest things once started – some good, like Casual Friday and surfer music, some bad like the drug culture, and some intensely annoying like “Have A Nice Day!”

California was the liberal opposite of the hidebound, narrow-minded, culturally repressed American Gothic folk who inhabited places like Iowa, or Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire or Connecticut. You know, the Rubes.

California was Haight-Asbury and Flower Power and 77 Sunset Strip and Disneyland and Hollywood and, in a word, possibility. The dream-dreamers and dream-makers lived there.

Those other places were the spirituals heirs of the Puritans and the farmers. Their thought ran in straight rows like the furrows of their fields, and woe betide the weed or wild idea that tried to sprout in that ground. California thought was far too vigorous for straight rows, and ran in bold twists and splashes like tie-died clothes.

Sure, California sometimes gave the rest of the country a lesson in opposites. Sometimes the leader was Governor Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown. Sometimes it was Governor Ronald Reagan. But those opposites both pointed to a future better than the Hidebound Back East. No more.

Scientists tell us that the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse every cosmic now and then, and California and the Hidebound Back East have switched ends on the political scale. And what did it was gay marriage.

Boiled down and stripped of both Bible-thumping and the Feather Flaunting, gay marriage comes down to a simple question of equal protection under law.

If two persons of one moral persuasion can have the state bless the union of their affections, bodies and property, then the state must so bless any two persons of any persuasion. If the law does not protect all equally, it is not law – at least not the law of those who declared to a tyrant and to the ages “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As a nation, we haven’t been universal in living up to that truth. It took us some time before we all agreed it included women, longer still before we really included people of color, but we’re still working. That’s been the case since we all agreed to “to form a more perfect Union,” recognizing in the Constitution’s preamble that it would remain a work in progress.

Progress was certainly made in New Hampshire this week when the governor signed a bill legalizing gay marriage, joining the Granite State to five others that had reaffirmed equal protection under the law.

California, of course, has been different. First, its Supreme Court said the state constitution meant that marriage licenses could be issued to same-sex couples. Then the voters floated and passed Proposition 8, which said nuts to that, it’s the boy-girl way or the highway. And the California Supreme Court said, yeah, well, the voters have spoken, but those 18,000 or so of you caught in the crossfire are still married.

And now, California voters, who get more propositions than a tourist at Hollywood and Vine, will probably have to address the issue again.

Much to the amusement of the hip and trendy – and liberty-loving and patriotic – folk in Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut.

What’s the matter with those rubes in California? Don’t they get it?

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