Reflections on fake news — the Michael Jackson case
Fabricated stories have dominated the public discourse about Jackson for decades, but now we can push back
Manu Bezamat
Fake news is one of the biggest social phenomena of the 20th and 21st centuries. The fabrication of narratives scarcely based on facts (if based at all) has been used to many social and political purposes, propelling disinformation and actively helping in the miseducation of the public.
Michael Jackson is arguably the most famous target of fake news in the cultural setting of our times. His abhorrent treatment by the media started in the tabloids, but quickly reached the ranks of the more reputable media outlets, which, especially in his case, seem to waive the verification of the sources altogether.
Fake news is at the very core of the allegations against Jackson. Where evidence is lacking, the media fabricates narratives in order to stitch together a seemingly linear and coherent story which paints him as a freak and a villain. Decontextualization, confusion and repetition are the key strategies.
By completely extracting Jackson from the socio-cultural context of his time and omitting the personal history, the emotions and the motivations that led him to act a certain way, instead of another, fake news has isolated and dehumanized him, turning a complex individual into a hollow object, opening the floodgates for public judgement and mockery.
It’s not by accident that confusing (and often contradictory) information is spread by some media outlets. The focus is not on the quality of the news, but rather on the quantity, as if they’re throwing a myriad of stories on the public and hoping that a few stick. And the more outlandish these stories are, the better — at least in Jackson’s case.
Some stories that have circulated about Jackson in the media since the 1980s are so utterly bizarre and unbelievable that anything that slightly resembles a plausible scenario is automatically seen as the truth, however fabricated it may be. Even if a particular piece of “news” isn’t entirely believed by the public, there’s still a lot to gain, because it helps create an aura of absurdity and negativity that makes the next lie more believable.
The cacophony of information confuses the public, which becomes so overwhelmed that, instead of searching for accurate sources, it settles for the thought that if a lot of media outlets are reporting the same stories in more or less the same way, then there has to be at least some truth to it — in short, it’s the old where there’s smoke, there’s fire mentality. But what if, instead of a real fire, there’s someone deceptively blowing smoke all of this time?
The general public seems to base its undying “trust” in the media in the age-old illusion that journalism and media outlets exist merely to report the truth about the facts in an unbiased way. Journalists should report the truth about the facts with the least possible bias. Whether all of them they actually do, it’s a whole different story.
This is not a diss at all journalists. Some of the greatest writers, thinkers and activists in history were/are journalists. But then there is also the kind of journalists that aim for the scoop above all else, that see a story about a struggling human being only as a way to move up on the social ladder, wreaking havoc in the personal lives of their subjects.
Add to that the pressures that journalists in general are often subjected to in their work environment to conform to their employer’s agendas, and the financial strains that the media outlets themselves go through, trying to survive in shifting industries, and you have an explosive combination, one that is bound to leave some victims along the way.
Whether they’re doing it to get ahead of their peers, to gain visibility or just because everyone is doing it, the fact is that, in Michael Jackson’s case, fake news has been established as the main narrative because these individuals and companies have been willing to continuously repeat the same fallacies throughout the years.
It makes no difference if a fabricated story, told by a disgruntled ex-employee of Jackson’s who received a hefty amount to embellish his memories, is printed on the cover of a tabloid on purpose, or if that same piece of “news” made its way to a highbrown newspaper column due to a simple lack of fact-checking. The effect is the same.
After over thirty years of reputation-smearing, the negative image associated with Jackson is so solidified that any and all absurdities said about him are taken as truth by a large part of society. Confirmation bias, the tendency to only look for and/or process information that is consistent with one’s pre-existing beliefs, explains the behavior of the majority of Jackson’s guilters — they are only willing to take as truth the stories that already confirm their view of the singer.
To make things even more difficult, the main public narratives about Jackson — that he was a man who hated himself and his roots; that he had illegal and immoral relations with children — are extremely simplistic and easy to grasp, while the truth… Well, the truth is that much more complex, because even listening to it requires a great deal of empathy. Because coming to the conclusion that every individual is a product of their own personal history, their time and their culture, whose actions need to be analyzed in their context, requires intelligence. Being a bigot does not.
And let’s face it. In the hyper-individualistic, Netflix-and-chill times we live in, nobody wants to think. Nobody wants to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. At best most people care enough about a subject only to the point of retweeting a short article or liking a Facebook post; at worst, intense human suffering becomes a funny meme that some idiot will share on social media in hopes of it going viral.
But not all is lost. If it’s true that the dawn of internet has boosted the fake news industry, it has also given common citizens an invaluable tool to push back against simplistic one-sided narratives. And we’re not giving up anytime soon.
Reflections on fake news — the Michael Jackson case was originally published in MJ Beats on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
