Tabloid Truth: Michael Jackson Story

FRONTLINE goes behind the scenes of television coverage of the Michael Jackson story to look at the people, organizations and economic pressures that have led to the tabloidization of American television. Within a matter of days after an early morning phone call tipped a freelance reporter about Jackson´s alleged child abuse, the story jumped from hard verifiable news to spectacle an entertainment. “Tabloid Truth” follows the tabloid press as it pursues the Jackson story-showing how a few of the most exuberant and successful of the tabloid reporters fight over the few scraps of solid information and elbow in for interviews with profusion of “witnesses” and headline-grabbing lawyers. “Tabloid Truth” also follows the money trial, revealing the colorful characters who work the Jackson scandal for fun and profit, and details how more or less “respectable” news programs are succumbing to the subjects and techniques of tabloid reports. “This scandal cost Jackson his image and untold millions in money,” says correspondent Richard Ben Cramer. “But what does it cost us, when all our news in entertainment? And every story -even child abuse- is a property with a price?”