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Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/raise-your-voice

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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/irish-tribute-michael-jackson

[h=1]An Irish Tribute to Michael Jackson[/h]

Each year the Royal Dublin Society hosts the Hallelujah choir. Three thousand children from all across Ireland come together to celebrate Christmas and to sing for their friends and family. A tribute to Michael Jackson was part of the 2010 celebration.
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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[h=1]Man in the Mirror[/h]

Each year the Swedish Nobel Academy hosts a Peace Concert in conjunction with the awarding of the Peace Prize. On December 11, 2009, the concert included a final number with all of that year's participants: Donna Summer, Esperanza Spading, Westlife, Luis Fonsi, Alexander Rybak, Amadou and Mariam, Will Smith, Willow Smith, Jaden Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Natasha Bedingfield, Wyclef Jean, Toby Keith and international pianist, Lang Lang. The song performed that night was Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror."
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/we-are-world

[h=1]We Are the World[/h]

Luciano Pavarotti annually hosted the "Pavarotti and Friends" charity concerts in his home town of Modena in Italy, joining with singers from all parts of the music industry. In this 2006 concert, the concert's finale ended with Michael Jackson's song, "We Are the World." Italian pop singer, Laura Pausini joined Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, Lionel Richie, Gloria Estefan and Pavarotti in the performance.



 
Each year the Swedish Nobel Academy hosts a Peace Concert in conjunction with the awarding of the Peace Prize. On December 11, 2009, the concert included a final number with all of that year's participants: Donna Summer, Esperanza Spading, Westlife, Luis Fonsi, Alexander Rybak, Amadou and Mariam, Will Smith, Willow Smith, Jaden Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Natasha Bedingfield, Wyclef Jean, Toby Keith and international pianist, Lang Lang. The song performed that night was Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror."
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It´s Norway who decides who gets the Nobel Peace Price and hosts the Peace Concert.
When Alfred Nobel lived 1833-1896 Norway belonged to Sweden that´s why both Sweden and Norway are involved.
Alfred Nobel was a chemist who invented the dynamite and had many other patents too.
He saw up close what explosives could do and he understood it could be used for bad things too, but he thought it would be a deterrent effect.
He was wrong there.
Not even the atomic bombs have stopped wars.

I saw recently a documentary about a man in Japan,Tsutomu Yamaguchi , who survived 2 atom bombs.
It seems they didn´t want to talk about it in Japan, it wasn´t good for you to mention you were a victim for the atomic bombs.
He wanted to talk about it earlier but he started when he was old.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...iroshima-ndash-and-then-nagasaki-1654294.html
It must not happen a third time he said.One for all,all for one.
He was invited to New York to talk for the United nations.
It was emotional for him to come to the country which dropped the bombs but he said he didn´t hate all americans.
http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/hibakusha-story-tsutomu-yamaguchi
 
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Words and Art

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Study of an embryo from Leonardo Da Vinci's Notebooks
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Combining words with art seems to have evolved as a practice since each was invented. During the time of the Renaissance it was commonplace to combine the two within documents since there was no “real” division between the sciences and arts. For example, Leonardo da Vinci recorded his studies and observations in over 13,000 pages of notes infused with drawings. Leonardo kept his diary of notes daily, recording everything around him. His writings become the forerunner of modern science.

So why are we introducing this concept of working with words and art in Words and Violence? It makes perfect sense. Art should not be separate from our daily lives. Using words to express our angst or emotional fury seems very natural. Adding color, forms or designs to our emotions is another way of “dealing.”

Words and Violence is filled with essays, articles, poems, quotes, and music that relates directly to bullying, conflict gone crazy, violence and war. These are heavy duty topics. As you experience the content in Words and Violence what moves you? Take those questions and feelings you have and work with them--make them visual. This is a way to re-create your thoughts and in the process bring you to a new place of thinking and acting.

There are a lot of wonderful examples of how to create a sketchbook on the web. There are even technical lessons you can explore on YouTube. Click on the appropriate words in the previous sentence and you’ll find yourself exploring some new territory. In the following pages we’d like to introduce you to some artists who have been using words with their art for quite some time. They might inspire you. Share what you’ve done with us. Send us examples of your work. You can do that by "Add New Comment" below and we'll get back to you. We’d love to add your work to Words and Violence right here in this section of the book.
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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/sam-fink-illustrator-documents

Sam Fink: Illustrator of Documents​

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Learn more about Sam Fink and his works (click here for information and purchase)
When you select any Amazon item to buy from the Voices Education Project web site, and then check out at Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase price will be paid to Voices to support our work.
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Samuel Fink is a graphic artist and a calligrapher. Out of all the artists in this section, Fink’s art involves working primarily with illustrating historical documents: The U.S. Constitution, Gettsburg Address, The Book of Exodus and the Declaration of Independence. In his early 90s, Sam Fink is still creating.

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Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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http://vimeo.com/48407859

New Film Added to Words and Violence

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What we need to learn from children isn't childish. Being with them connects us to the deeper wisdom of life which is everpresent, and only asks to be lived. They know the way to solutions that lie waiting to be recognized within our own hearts.

This quote begins a new film about the thoughts and actions of Michael Jackson. Two years ago Voices launched Words and Violence, an educational packet dedicated to Michael Jackson. Last year we released a second edition, and throughout the year we have continued to post new articles, quotes and poetry. And now, we offer, A Life Celebrated, A King Remembered fromWalking Moon Studios onVimeo.
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/jenny-holzer-large-scale-public-displays

Jenny Holzer: Large-Scale Public Displays


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When you select any Amazon item to buy from the Voices Education Project web site, and then check out at Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase price will be paid to Voices to support our work.

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Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. She is best known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projects on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.

Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and was meant to remain hidden.


 
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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/robert-indiana-power-word

[h=1]Robert Indiana: The Power of the Word[/h]
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Learn more about the work of Robert Indiana (click here for more information and purchase)
When you select any Amazon item to buy from the Voices Education Project web site, and then check out at Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase price will be paid to Voices to support our work.
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Born in New Castle, Indian, Robert Indiana is most associated with the Pop Art Movement of the 1960s, though he claims to be the least “pop” of any of the other artists. His most famous work is his LOVE painting that was created as a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art. The rest is history. The card became a statue, and Love blossomed to HOPE. Throughout his career Indiana has introduced “words” into his silk screen prints, sculptures and paintings.

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Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum-Inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/corita-kent-medium-message

[h=1]Corita Kent: The Medium is the Message[/h]
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See more of Corita Kent's art (click here for information and purchase)
When you select any Amazon item to buy from the Voices Education Project web site, and then check out at Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase price will be paid to Voices to support our work.
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Corita Kent was a Catholic nun in the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary order. She is also known as Sister Mary Corita Kent. As an artist and an educator she worked in Los Angeles and Boston. Her work was almost exclusively with silkscreen and serigraphy; and she helped establish it as a fine art medium. Her artwork, with its messages of love and peace, was particularly popular during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. She created several hundred serigraph designs, for posters, book covers, and murals.
Images reproduced courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles
Source: Corita Art Center: https://www.corita.org/coritadb/index.php?Itemid=6&id=5&option=com_content&task=view



 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum-Inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

:clapping: :heart: :ciao: K Love :wild: This Awesome Thread is Facebook Updated
Thank-you for all you do to bring these messages to US :heart: :clapping:
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

Now that is the most exciting news, can't wait :clapping::bow:

You have done an amazing job sharing this important and profound information that I believe could change lives. I want to thank-you for educating me in how many new ways I can help children even if I am not a parent :pray::bow: Love & Light :heart:

windy09 said:
Thank you MJ Tinkerbell. I will post more this weekend. :angel:
Click to expand...
 
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http://voiceseducation.org/content/richard-stine-world-thought-reflection-and-action

Richard Stine: A World of Thought, Reflection and Action

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Read Richard Stine's book, The World of Richard Stine (click here for information and purchase)

When you select any Amazon item to buy from the Voices Education Project web site, and then check out at Amazon.com, a portion of your purchase price will be paid to Voices to support our work.

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Richard Stine is an artist and writer who is known world-wide through his paintings, drawings, and postcards. He has also published two books, Off To Sea (1987) and The World of Richard Stine (1994) which feature his unique approach to art. Off To Sea is a modern love story in which Stine’s drawings and accompanying text trace a journey of infatuation, growth, separation, and reunion between a man and a woman. The World of Richard Stine (1994) is a retrospective collection of Stine’s art and writings and was featured as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1994. It covers subjects such as love, art, freedom, isolation, desire, conflict, dreams and creativity. Publisher’s Weekly says: “At once whimsical and philosophical, conceptualist and cartoonish, Stine's delightfully irresistible art unlocks the heart's unspoken desires and pries open the mind's devious recesses.”




 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana


http://www.voiceseducation.org/

http://www.voiceseducation.org/conte...second-edition

http://voiceseducation.org/content/change-your-words-change-your-world

Change Your Words. Change Your World.



This short film illustrates the power of words to radically change your message and your effect upon the world. It was produced by Purplefeather (http://www.purplefeather.co.uk).

Originally entitled "Homage to Historia de un letrero," (The Story of a Sign) by Alonso Alvarez Barreda. Music by: Giles Lamb, http://www.gileslamb.com and filmed by www.redsnappa.com.

Director was Seth Gardner. and the cast included Bill Thompson and Beth Miller http://www.uk.castingcallpro.com/view.php?uid=217905.

Used with permission of Purplefeather.

Next section to be posted from Voices Education Project - Words and Violence is
In Depth Reflective Articles
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

Thank you Windy09 and Legacy Team - That was beautiful _ words can truly make a difference. I sent this out via my twitter :)
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

qbee said:
Thank you Windy09 and Legacy Team - That was beautiful _ words can truly make a difference. I sent this out via my twitter :)
Click to expand...

Thank you qbee. I think it's very important that we are conscious of how we use words. After participated in this curriculum and reading the various parts, I try to be very careful on how I use words. :angel:
 
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http://voiceseducation.org/content/overview-language-prejudice

An Overview of the Language of Prejudice


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from institutionialized racism by Salauddine Mohammed Faruque

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People sometimes refer to &#8220;bigoted&#8221; or &#8220;prejudiced&#8221; language, but in fact, language itself is neutral, a vehicle for conveying the attitudes of its users; it has no agenda or bias of its own, but rather reflects (and reinforces) those of the people who use it. In other words, language is a tool, and it can be used for good or ill, depending on how it&#8217;s wielded. In the worst case, it can indeed be a &#8220;loaded weapon,&#8221; as Dwight Bolinger famously declared in the title of one of his books.
Nevertheless, a number of language strategies have been used throughout history to express racist, sexist or other biased attitudes and to influence the attitudes and beliefs of others, intentionally or (perhaps even more dangerously) unintentionally. What follows is a sampling of such language devices; the first three can be easily applied to any stigmatized or marginalized group, resulting in classic &#8220;racist language,&#8221; while the last three have been associated specifically with gender stereotyping and sexist attitudes.

Derogatory Epithets

Probably the most basic and common form of &#8220;prejudiced&#8221; language and the one most commonly thought of when hurtful language is at issue, this category simply consists of negative labels for specific groups of people. It seems likely that any collection of individuals, especially minorities, who share any characteristics at all, even those usually viewed positively, will be targeted with some term that ends up conveying negative connotations, even if the label started out neutral or even positive (Madelon Heatherington points out the harmful effect of even &#8220;euphemistic epithets&#8221; (175-76), while Charles Berlitz discusses the origins of some well-known epithets in his classic article, "The Etymology of the International Insult").

Thus, those who share race, ethnic background, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation or behavior, religion, age, physical or mental features or (dis)abilities, and many more characteristics, whether seen by others as virtues or defects, will sooner or later find themselves labeled by epithets highlighting their shared outsider status. In English alone, hundreds of such labels have been in common use for centuries, with new ones being created all the time, in spite of the push for political correctness and general increased sensitivity of recent times.


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Some examples: honky, nigger, slant eyes (for race); spic, kraut, frog (ethnic/national background); fat cats, trailer trash(class); bitch, broad, tart, girl (women); fag(got), homo, queer (homosexuals); kike, mackerel snapper (religion); gimp,retard, four-eyes, blimp (disability/physical features); etc.

Euphemistic Put-downs.
This is our term for a specific sort of backhanded compliment involving negative stereotypes which Heatherington discusses (176-77) but provides no name for. This sort of comment on the surface seems to praise its recipient, but on closer inspection does so at the expense of the group to which the recipient is seen to belong. That is, the positive characteristic attributed to the recipient is presented as not typical of the target&#8217;s group, thereby marking the recipient specifically as better than and exceptional compared to the rest of the group&#8217;s members because she or he possesses that feature while the rest of the group is viewed as lacking it.

For example, a statement like &#8220;you&#8217;re pretty strong for a girl&#8221; on first hearing compliments afemale&#8217;s strength, but its deeper message is not really that the hearer is strong per se, but that she is stronger than other girls, who are stereotypically thought to be pretty weak. Likewise, the pattern "You don't act/think/sound/look/etc. like a cop/Jew, Mexican/science geek/etc." offers the claim that the hearer is not identifiable as a member of the named category&#8212;and that that fact is a good thing. Consider also the claim stated in a classic ad that some product is "explained in terms even a housewife can understand&#8221;; the writer is acknowledging homemakers&#8217; ability to comprehend the explanation while signaling through the use of &#8220;even&#8221; how limited he or she thinks this group&#8217;s intelligence actually is.

Labels of Primary Potency.

Heatherington also names and discusses this language device (177-78). These labels are typically adjectives emphasizing the minority status of some member of a group named by the nouns which the adjectives are modifying. Normally, the noun in a noun phrase carries more meaning or power than anything modifying it, but in these adjective-noun pairings, it is the adjective that catches hearers&#8217; attention and seems most significant (hence, being the most potent part of the phrase), specifically because it identifies something perceived as exceptional about the person being described in relation to the group he or she belongs to.

Thus, phrases like lady doctor, male nurse, black lawyer, elderly basketball player, and so on, appear on the surface to simply describe individuals who belong to various professions, but the adjectives clearly mark them as somehow atypical or marginal examples of each category&#8212;not a &#8220;regular&#8221; doctor, but a lady doctor, not a &#8220;regular&#8221; basketball player, but anelderly one, etc.&#8212;where the characteristic named by the adjective (the label of primary potency) is noteworthy because most members of the category identified by the noun are assumed not to possess that characteristic. In other words, the adjectives overpower the nouns and seem to provide more salient information than the nouns do, and that information always points to the recipient&#8217;s less-than-typical nature.

Most English speakers would probably see nothing negative about such labels, but they do reinforce expectations for what different sorts of people can (or should be able to) do&#8212;restrictions often imposed just on the basis of some background characteristic which usually has nothing to do with those individuals&#8217; ability to perform the role they are trying to fill. And we can actually see this function at work most clearly in retrospect, when specific labels become less common. For example, most people don&#8217;t refer to lady doctors anymore, precisely because they are so common that their gender is no longer seen as remarkable and therefore needing to be remarked on. The chain of events in these cases is that once perceived limitations of some group are diminished (through social change, say), the existence of certain types of people/job combinations no longer gets a lot of (usually negative) attention. Speakers then no longer feel the need to label certain members of some field as exceptional, and the original stereotypes are no longer reinforced by constant use of these labels, no doubt further helping along the process of normalization.

Single Terms or Pairs of Terms Not Used Equivalently for Two Groups

Thisdevice most commonly occurs in language used about females vs. males, and is a primary reinforcing tool of sexist attitudes. As Robin Lakoff and several early editions of The Ohio State University Linguistics Department&#8217;s Language Fileshave pointed out, in this type of language, either a single term or a pair of equivalent-looking terms in fact convey(s) noticeably different meanings depending on whether the term(s) refer(s) to a male or a female&#8212;and the female use by and large has less positive or more negative meanings (if only subjective connotations) than does the term used for males. These differences develop because of power imbalances between and various stereotypes about the two groups: terms for the less powerful group reflect that powerlessness and reveal negative attitudes toward members, while terms for the more powerful group reflect that power and develop positive connotations congruent with members&#8217; higher status.

Consider the single adjective easy. It has been used to describe people as well as lessons and home-repair projects, but it has taken on markedly different meanings when used for men vs. women. Compare your own interpretations of he is easyvs. she is easy. The former is usually understood to mean some male is even-tempered, willing to go with the flow, and so on, while the latter is even today clearly seen to be referring to a female&#8217;s sexual behavior&#8212;she is promiscuous. The same pattern holds for he is loose/she is loose, he is fast/she is fast, and other adjectives, as well as for nouns like tramp(compare he is a tramp vs. she is a tramp). That is, when these words refer to women, they have added connotations not seen for men, almost always sexual in nature, and always negative.

Then there are pairs of terms like governor/governess, master/mistress, and others, whose two members not only have different basic meanings, even though the female term (second) is obviously derived from the male one (first), but whose male term clearly refers to a more powerful and higher-status position than does its female counterpart. This situation also holds for other pairs whose members, while totally unrelated words, can be assumed to have originated to express truly parallel meanings but now show a similar imbalance of power and negativity, like bachelor/ spinster, wizard/witch, andbuddy/sissy (derived from brother and sister, respectively).


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Generic forms based on masculine forms.
This language pattern is exclusively gender related, but is one of the subtlest yet most pervasive forms of attitude shaping in English. It is also the only human-category-related English language pattern whose use has been (in the case of the pronoun use described below) dictated by a government body. The basic rule here holds that when the gender of a person is unknown, speakers are to refer to that person using a masculine form by default, never the equivalent feminine form or a gender-neutral plural form. In fact, obedience to this pattern, according to Elaine Chaika (446), was officially ordered by the British Parliament for third-person-singular-pronoun selection (he vs. she) in cases of unspecified sex&#8212;i.e., use the so-called &#8220;generic he&#8221; in such cases. Thus, everyone should do his best, an honors student needs to keep his grade point average above 3.5, and, to quote a wonderful example from a magazine ad (admittedly published many years ago), "The average person finds it no problem at all to have 3 head colds, one sunburn, 20 headaches, and 2 hangovers, and still get in his 61 hours of shaving" (only if the average person is male, surely?).

Nouns used to refer to single humans of unspecified gender also follow this rule, as do verbs derived from such nouns. Thus, we speak of &#8220;the brotherhood of man&#8221; and &#8220;mankind,&#8221; something quite different in scope from &#8220;the sisterhood of women&#8221; and &#8220;womankind,&#8221; and we also &#8220;man&#8221; lifeboats, desks and phones while urging people to &#8220;man up&#8221; (compare &#8220;you go, girl&#8221;).Language Files and many other resources offer more examples of this device, too.

While many people have reacted skeptically to arguments that this language pattern really conveys sexism or has any negative impact on women, evidence does exist that people are influenced in their expectations and attitudes about gender roles, masculine primacy, and females&#8217; second-class status when the masculine language form is always chosen over a feminine form or a truly gender-neutral one. To give just one example of such evidence, consider Fatemeh Khosroshahi&#8217;s 1989 study of how both men and women drew representations of people referred to in sentences using different pronouns&#8212;he, he or she, or they. Among her findings, she reports that &#8220;traditional-language men and women still consistently use the generic he in their writing and they also interpret generic sentences primarily in terms of male referents&#8221; (520) as seen in their drawing mostly male figures to illustrate the sentences they are given, and concludes that for this group, &#8220;both their language and their thought are androcentric&#8221; (520). Her results, of course, do not prove that these subjects&#8217; language caused their reactions, but it is reasonable to assume that their language and gender expectations do reinforce one another.

Sex-stereotyped Neutral Terms

Finally, perhaps the most indirect type of attitude-reinforcing language is a category that doesn&#8217;t actually convey negative meanings or contain biased vocabulary per se. Rather, it comprises words or phrases which, because of women&#8217;s vs. men&#8217;s social roles and feelings about each sex, reflect gender-identity expectations even though these words&#8217; denotations say nothing about gender as part of their definitions.

A classic example (with more, again, available in Language Files): the descriptive label blond(e) is unmarked for gender (at least in spoken English), and yet if a friend mentions that his upstairs neighbor is a blond(e), chances are you&#8217;ll assume that neighbor is a woman, since women are much more likely to be characterized by physical features like hair color than are men. Likewise, some profession labels are still more likely to be associated with one sex over the other (though less automatically than in decades past): nurse, model and prostitute with women; surgeon, jet pilot and drill sergeant with men. This gender expectation is brought to the fore especially in cases where people use labels of primary potency to identify professionals of the unexpected sex: male nurse or prostitute, female surgeon or quarterback. And some terms, mostly negative ones referring to behavior perceived as bad (usually sex-related), are tied to one gender so clearly that no equivalent term exists for the other gender, requiring extra sex-specifying adjectives to be tacked on to the other gender&#8217;s label, although in some cases, not even that possibility works: slut vs. male slut, whore vs. man whore (not gigolo), diva vs.male diva (not divo), pervert vs. female pervert (?), but bitch vs. ?, rapist vs. ?.

Given the continued variety and pervasiveness of these attitude-expressing and &#8211;reinforcing language devices, what can those of us who want to neutralize such language do, especially since decades of social change, increasing acceptance of diversity and equality, and explicit study and discussion of the nature of prejudice, how it is conveyed, and how it might be fought have still failed to eliminate its use? Obviously, a society cannot control all its members, and bigots are likely always to be among us, but when it comes to the automatic or thoughtless use of prejudice-expressing language and its reinforcing impact, thereare steps individuals can take to change language patterns both in their own speech and in the language of others. In fact, Heatherington (183) offers a concise four-step procedure for changing objectionable language which can also be applied to other objectionable behavior:

1. Identify the objectionable language (or behavior);
2. Extinguish that language (or behavior);
3. Substitute preferred language (or behavior);
4. Reinforce preferred language (or behavior).

How one applies this approach will depend on countless factors: whose speech, one&#8217;s own or someone else&#8217;s? If
someone else&#8217;s, that of someone less powerful than you, like a child, or more powerful, like a boss? Can rewards be offered, and if so, then tangible rewards, like higher grades on a student&#8217;s paper, or verbal ones, like praise, or simply nonverbal signs of approval? It also seems clear that the second and third steps will require simultaneous rather than sequential application. Moreover, this strategy might be a very limited way to change society, perhaps affecting only one person at a time. But all the same, if parents and teachers can raise their own awareness of how language does influence their own and others&#8217; beliefs and attitudes about different types of people and then are able to teach their children and students the same lessons while reinforcing more desirable language (and therefore, we hope, the attitudes behind the language), as has been done to a great extent over the years, then prejudice and &#8220;prejudiced&#8221; language should indeed become less common, or at least less a matter of thoughtless habit. If language is still a loaded weapon, we can at least make sure it is wielded with care and enlightenment, and especially for good causes like tolerance and equality.

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l., Deborah Schaffer, r., Rachel Schaffer

Deborah Schaffer received her Ph.D. in linguistics from The Ohio State University Ohio State University. She is currently professor of English at Montana State University-Billings where she teaches linguistics, composition, and special topics in literature. She was the chair of the Language Attitudes and Popular Linguistics area of the Popular Culture Association from 1991 to 2005, and has had articles published in The Journal of Pragmatics, English Today, The Journal of Popular Culture, and ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, among others.

Dr. Rachel Schaffer has a Ph.D. in linguistics from The Ohio State University. She is a professor of English at Montana State University Billings, where she teaches linguistics, composition, and genre literature courses. A linguist by training, she shifted her research interests to mystery and detective fiction a number of years ago and has published articles on Dick Francis, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Craig Johnson, and other writers. She is currently a member of the editorial board of Clues: A Journal of Detection.
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

What a beautiful video
 
Re: Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

What a beautioful video
 
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Weapon of Mass Destruction: New Violence and WMD
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An Introduction to the Arsenal
Yes, I have met the enemy and I can assure you he is us. I wrote about it in the book Looking Back: History through the eyes of those who lived it. I have seen weapons of mass destruction stockpiled for human doom. I have walked through a secret location with a military escort in a place in Siberia where a decommissioning facility was being built, a place that I could never find again and had better not. I have sat in the corner of a restaurant in Russia with an American Commander holding a laptop connected to God-knows-where while he sorted through its data to find some things that had recently been declassified so he could show me; there were some things he couldn't show me. The large shells that held chemical weapons were about my size; the smaller ones that would turn the Super Bowl into a morgue, were about the size of wine bottles. I have stood in assemblies holding two wine bottles and wearing a gas mask in order to make a point.

But now I have identified another kind of violence and even more scary weapon of mass destruction. It was revealed while doing some new research. My advice: be afraid; be very afraid for this weapon is a heat seeking predator. Why is it so dangerous? Because it is 'friendly fire'; it's constructed so as to do the most damage in short bursts; it isn't aimed at an enemy but at one of our own. It's a stealth weapon that can come out of nowhere and take away your life. Yes it could happen to you in your fifteen minutes of fame and your six degrees of separation. What is it? The media.

The Mission: Human Suffering
Suffering is one of those common denominators and levelers for all of humanity. Humans know misery; humans suffer. Suffering comes in many forms: physical maladies that cause bodily pain, mental anguish, psychic wounding, imaginal fears, ecological dilemmas, circumstantial misfortune, and self inflicted injury or defeat. Some suffering appears to be accidental or resulting from particular twists of fate. Some suffering is wielded for political reasons, some for profit.

One may be born into poverty which appears to be a geographical accident of birth; one may be born with deformity or acquire a handicap that sometimes is genetic and sometimes an acquired calamity; one may be subject to many kinds of accidents and mishaps through a lifetime; risk taking required by culture may elevate the incidence of accidents leading to unfortunate outcomes. And certainly these misfortunes are hard to comprehend or assimilate.

We ask “why?” Why has a particular circumstance visited one person and not another? We search for meaning in suffering because we do not want to believe in its randomness or senselessness. Even when misery is an accident of nature in some way, it is not easy to accept and only the most spiritually advanced among us can embrace it. I only knew two: a nun who taught meditation, founder of a spiritual retreat center who held gratitude for her creeping blindness as it assisted in her quest for enlightenment. No longer able to see the outside world, she was forced to focus on the internal one and this greatly accelerated her spiritual growth. Ram Dass has said of his stroke that limited his movement; he had to learn to stand still to know the Presence.

We affix blame when misfortune visits. We have blamed fate, circumstances, ourselves, God, karma, luck, Satan, the gods and goddesses and more through time. We tend to link character to fortune: ‘How could this happen; she is such a good person? She doesn’t deserve this.’ We sometimes try to link character to deserving dark times. When misfortune befalls someone we don’t like we declare facetiously: ‘It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.’

The kind of suffering that is far more difficult to comprehend, for even the most tepidly moral person, is suffering heaped upon someone deliberately by another person. And the worst of those is the individual who with malice, plots in order to heap suffering on another for undeserved gain or something for which they have no claim or entitlement.

But there is another kind of suffering that is perpetrated upon another that constitutes the most vile purpose of all: entertainment. There have been many dark figures in history who have deliberately heaped suffering upon others: Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, Ivan the Terrible, come to mind. But mostly their reasons were political. There is, however, one famous figure in history known for inflicting suffering for sheer entertainment: Vlad the Impaler. According to the records, atrocities committed by Vlad to at least eighty thousand people include torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs, and drowning and skinning the feet, then putting salt on them and letting goats lick off the salt.

Pathologically sadistic, Vlad was highly entertained by watching people suffer. But his favorite voyeur pastime was impaling people on stakes. He perfected a method of using oil to make the stake slick so that it could be threaded cleverly in a way that would not pierce a vital organ but would keep the person alive for hours, even days. When impaling women with children, he often threaded their babies on the end of the stake jutting from their own chest. In this way, the mother was able to witness the horrific death of her infant before her own death. Vlad customarily ordered his meals and dined near the victims as he particularly enjoyed watching them squirm and hearing the screams while eating.

Method of Deployment
Yes, it’s hard to wrap your mind around that kind of depravity. Depravity comes in many flavors; there is even a contemporary kind that involves sadistic pleasure from entertainment. How much of a leap is it from sadistically impaling someone on a stake and inflicting maximum pain for your viewing pleasure to deliberately impaling someone on the cross of public humiliation, then periodically poking around and reopening the wounds to siphon all the psychic puss for encore? There is something lewd, salacious and obscene about the practice of impaling celebrities with today’s tabloid yellow pornography.

Have you noticed that currently the most popular genre in books and movies in our culture is Vampirism? We love to watch blood-letting and find it sexy? Does the irony of that escape you? Does the clamoring for tabloid gossip about our favorite celebrities satisfy some animalistic urge? It’s simply Neanderthal; no, more reptilian. There is something slimy about a culture supporting an industry that operates like a meat-market surgically slicing up pieces of people for human consumption. Stalking people with a voyeur's delight, carving them up, and feeding on their lives is cannibalism! There is nothing redeemable even human about engaging in a voyeurism that destroys people, their work, their lives and their futures. And our future.

It’s the kind of practice that deliberately looks for the lowest form of humanity. It gleefully attaches itself to its latest popular victim and sucks the life force from them. The worst offenders are journalists who deliberately hurl questions and insults designed to inflame the celebrity, already upset, so as to get even more lurid footage or copy for consumption.

Consumption of tabloid fodder and gossip is the kind of hobby that people engage in without thinking about the impact of their actions. Few think about the consequences of their indulging in the misguided practice of buying dirt rag magazines, watching tabloid TV, clamoring for the latest gossip about their celebrity interests. And reality TV is hardly ever a slice of my reality. How about yours?

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Collateral Damage
If we would think before we consume this stuff or clamor for more we might realize what is lost because of it, what futures are preempted because of it: What gifts do talented people withhold because they are afraid to venture into the public venue? How many performers hold back from introducing new or avant garde art for fear of public opinion? How many people deny they have a personal problem and delay or avoid treatment because if they checked themselves into a rehab facility, their personal lives would be splayed in headlines? How many great politicians have not run for public office because of the uncharitable scrutiny they face? How many books are not written because of the celebrity well known authors enjoy or because they might end up on someone's hit list? How many who have been excoriated by tabloid journalism give up on new work, new discoveries, maybe on humanity itself?

The tabloid frenzy over President Clinton’s indiscretion caused his impeachment. A president was impeached for behavior in his private life. And a beloved president of history was again exposed for private liaisons while in office. Is that our business? These kinds of “exposures” take down good men. Clinton subsequently has marshaled global humanitarian efforts responsible for saving the lives of millions. Had he been humiliated beyond repair and faded into obscurity because of a human failing what would we have lost?

Do you remember Vince Foster? Vince Foster was the Deputy White House Counsel for the Clintons who investigated the Travel office corruption charges on behalf of Hillary Clinton. He became so despondent over the affair that he committed suicide. His suicide resignation note read “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.”

Lady Diana was a favorite target of the tabloid press that insisted on focusing their spotlight on rumors of anorexia, bulimia and depression instead of her humanitarian work with children and eliminating land mines. And all this yellow press, while she was trying to hold together a marriage to a royal husband who was carrying a torch for someone else! What young new bride would navigate all that well? The Paparazzi haunted Diana endlessly and hunted her down on the night she died. Her driver had been drinking and certainly alcohol contributed to the accident. But the driver would not have been speeding if the Paparazzi had not been stalking and chasing Diana. And after the accident they helped to cause, they continued snapping pictures as she lay dying in the back seat.

And then there’s the most recent and visible casualty of the tabloid press: Michael Jackson. Deeply traumatized by the events of his life, by relentless exploitation by tabloid America, by rabid officials who anticipated their own fame in taking down a famous celebrity, dispirited by the treatment of his face, skin color, his home, his work, his life and even his innocence, Michael had trouble sleeping at night. The two cases brought against Michael alleging impropriety with children brought the tabloids down on a gentle humanitarian whose life was about saving and healing children. A man who was singing “Heal the World” in Super Bowl performances and promoting peace in his concerts.

At his 2005 trial, hundreds of reporters drooling over anticipated juicy headlines, descended on the courthouse periphery. For five months they circled like vultures waiting to pick the bones from the carcass of his life served up in a trial with charges that never should have been brought. Michael simply wasn’t guilty.

Prison for someone like Michael Jackson would have been a death sentence. He lived month after month with that threat while the media conveniently left out newsworthy trial developments proving his innocence. Jermaine Jackson, Michael’s brother says he watched the light gradually go out of Michael’s eyes during the trial. A bone-weary, dispirited and traumatized father took his children and left his homeland, leaving behind a grueling trial, a justice system that failed to protect him from extortion, a media that impaled him and left him hanging exposed despite his innocence. He lost a home he cherished and shared for joy because he could no longer live there, the closeness to his beloved Jackson family, and his country. A family with a history of extortion of other celebrities had targeted Michael and law enforcement with the media as accomplice, seduced by the allure of celebrity, played life and death games for sport.

How many Vince Fosters are there? What did we lose when we lost Diana and Michael? The loss is incalculable. Diana was the people’s princess and Michael was the most famous humanitarian in the world. They both were devoted to human welfare and social reform especially for children. Their work on this planet is legion and legendary as is their support of charities and generous philanthropy. Neither one had to, but they used their fame for all of humanity, for the elimination of pain, misery and suffering. And how did we thank these global messengers? We killed them.

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Early Warning System
Yellow press and you know who you are: here is your WMD Early Warning: More and more people are waking up on this planet. More humans are courting their own spirituality and enlightenment. Put your finger on that pulse because that heartbeat of humanity is our future. And I guarantee that you will not be here then. Unless you change your methods and reinvent your genre, you will be irrelevant. I promise you we, humanity, are far more than your narrow definition could ever imagine. We are tired of low slung dramas that don't work, a higher game awaits us and viewed from here, it sparkles.

Your imaginings are wrong; we are better than that! It’s sad enough that pain and misery visits every single life on this planet. We no longer wish to deliberately inflict it. Not for sport. You want to keep us down and drinking your Kool-Aid? You want us obedient to your doctrine? You think that is really going to work? We want to change. We are growing up and we don't want publications and media that slay people for fun. We are tired of the doom and gloom of people’s wounded humanity; we would like to hear about their brilliance. It's time. We want to applaud human contributions to art and life. We want to respect public figures more and be mature enough to allow them some dignity and privacy.

Decommissioning the Weapon
We have a request media: We want you to stop inviting us where we don’t belong. We want you to give us the facts without the hype and sensationalism that by someone else’s arrogant determination censors what we are entitled to. We resent being spoon fed untruths so that somebody can sell a vile product and get fat paychecks because we are believed sophomoric. We resent being duped and treated like a commodity: like a consumer pig fattened up with garbage for the purpose of someone else’s slaughter. We are intelligent people; we would really like the facts and to decide for ourselves who and what we value.

Stop belittling us and all of humanity with your de-evolution. And now that we have all allowed the devolved media to destroy people who were national treasures and we have jeopardized a more bedazzled future because of the contributions they can no longer make, we are asking you to please stop killing people on our behalf. No, we are demanding it. We want no part in it. We want to breathe clear air not tainted with the stench of tabloid slaughter. We don't want to sit down to our dinner like Vlad, while tabloid TV shows dangle impaled flailing celebrity bodies in front of us during our meal. We don't want to feel that guilt or shame. We want to be part of creating a world we can live with and we can tell you it's not this one.

Peacekeeping Force
We want to create a world where art is esteemed in whatever form, where beauty is a common pleasure, where the human mind and spirit is elevated; no, revered and we want help with that. We want a world where people’s woundedness is cradled with tenderness not exposed with glee. We want you to listen to us, to help us celebrate the human spirit, not feel ashamed of it. We all feel the winds changing and we want you to stop blowing us in the wrong direction. We want you to support us... humanity. We want you to do that by elevating the art of communication back to where it belongs and to feature and be the change we long to see in the world.

We have seen enough of what your weapons of mass destruction can do to a person and a world when they are unleashed. They destroy humanity. Ours. The create vacuums in the future where human treasures might have walked. We are asking you, the media… the latest incarnation of a WMD to decommission your arsenal and help us to make peace with ourselves... with the rest of the members of our human family. And please, help us to close the door on a shadowy era now past. We are ready to be the change we wish to see in the world. We need you now to convey not the darkness of our species, but our brilliance to us.

Written by: Barbara Kaufmann, is an award winning writer, peacemaker minister, healer and shaman who “writes to simply change the world.” Her One Wordsmith www.onewordsmith.com website is filled with humanitarian short stories. And her new website Inner Michael www.innermichael.com features her research and writing in tribute to a global humanitarian. It is a metaphysical look at a misunderstood genius and man of our times who, it turns out, was a spiritual messenger hiding in plain sight.
 
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Sensationalism, Inflammatory Words and the History of Tabloid Journalism


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War of the Worlds by Robert Czarny

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is Carl Phillips again, at the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Professor Pierson and I made the eleven miles from Princeton in ten minutes. Well, I . . . I hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes, like something out of a modern "Arabian Nights." Well, I just got here. I haven't had a chance to look around yet. I guess that's it. Yes, I guess that's the . . . thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with terrific force. The ground is covered with splinters of a tree it must have struck on its way down. What I can see of the . . . object itself doesn't look very much like a meteor, at least not the meteors I've seen. It looks more like a huge cylinder. It has a diameter of . . . what would you say, Professor Pierson?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grover&#8217;s Mill by telephone. Just a moment. At least forty people, including six state troopers lie dead in a field east of the village of Grover&#8217;s Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition. The next voice you hear will be that of Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, commander of the state militia at Trenton, New Jersey.

Orson Welles read this script of War of the Worlds adapted from H.G.Wells&#8217; novel of the same name during a CBS Mercury Theater on the Air episode in a famous incident that caused panic among the station&#8217;s six million listeners. The broadcast included a statement of its fictional origin at the beginning of the program but was timed to begin its earnest similarity to a news bulletin 12 minutes into the program to capture listeners from the more popular Chase and Sandborn Hour just as they cut away to dance music. Their show format was well known and featured the most popular radio personalities of the time. The timing and Orson Welles&#8217; Mercury Theater program was designed to lure listeners away from their competitor at Chase and Sandborn as they channel-surfed during the dance music interlude on the program. It was a calculated and deliberate attempt to increase the listening audience and gain Welles&#8217; infamy. It did both. Almost two million people believed an alien invasion was actually in progress and another one and half million were genuinely frightened by the news bulletin interruptions to regular programming that narrated the invasion of Martians on Planet Earth.

It was so convincing that some people grabbed firearms, herded their families into autos, and set out for the mountains. Gasoline was demanded at gunpoint and water towers were fired upon when they were mistaken for Martian space vehicles. In fact, the timing couldn&#8217;t have been more suited to paranoia and panic. This was just prior to World War II and Hitler himself derided the program citing it as evidence of the corruption inherent in Democracy. This incident is seen as watering down subsequent real incidents of horror such as the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, Chernobyl and others.

This is not the first nor last episode of using sensationalism and crowd psychology and public hysteria for social manipulation and personal and corporate gain. The CBS network faced sanctions because of the irresponsible use of public airwaves after the program, but not censorship. In the end, this episode was about circulation, consumers and market share.

Sensationalism, crowd psychology and hysteria have given us the witch trials, McCarthyism, tabloid journalism, war propaganda, Hitler&#8217;s &#8216;solution to the Jewish problem, &#8216; impeachment of a president, ruination from scandals, racism, genocide, misguided crusades, war and so many other ills foisted by humanity onto humanity. Fictional accounts sensationalized, presented as truth and &#8220;breaking news&#8221; in modern times have destroyed careers, lives and people.

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Salem Witch Trials

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Those who question in words or print the Machiavellian nature and ethics of such means to predetermined ends and hidden agendas are themselves often equally vilified. Philosophers and writers who questioned the methods of the witch trials and convictions, for example, were imprisoned themselves when they spoke out against the religiously motivated violence of the Puritans who dominated the local culture at that time. Puritanical beliefs disallowed rights for children and unmarried or widowed women adding political motive to the trials as land holdings were forfeit by women accused.

Those who question the true intent of religious fervor and the divisiveness of any doctrine of separation are often considered dark figures in their own time only to be found brilliant with insight and wisdom at a future time. They too have been imprisoned, persecuted, vilified and in modern culture, subjected to "witch hunts" and &#8220;hits&#8221; which meant a price on their heads. Salman Rushdie suffered such an attack for writing Satanic Verses, denounced as heresy by Muslim Cleric Ayatollah Khomeini who declared a fatwa on him and called for his assassination.

Tactics to inflame and change sentiment have seemed politically motivated. The modern version appears to be purely driven by circulation and profit. Is this too, a modern-day hoax perpetrated upon an unsuspecting audience?
Hitler used hype, propaganda and a philosophy of inferiority from his bully pulpit to murder more than six million Jewish citizens. Sensational accusations both verbal and in print defined McCarthyism in the paranoid culture of the Cold War era as members of society were labeled &#8220;communist&#8221; or &#8220;traitors&#8221; to their homeland and persecuted with public verbal floggings and blacklisting.

Racism defined the decade of late fifties to sixties as leaders like Martin Luther King rallied for equality and an end to racial discrimination. Words inflamed then. And before that colonists found reason to label as &#8220;savages&#8221; the indigenous peoples of the Americas. This indigenous, racial, cultural, ethic &#8220;inferiority&#8221; is inflamed by words and by words committed to permanency in print or other means.

Religious persecution, envy, jealousy, hysteria and the need for attention feed the obsession for finding evidence of the deviloperating in people metaphorically and materially. It seems that human shadow finds reason to envy light in others and seeks to actively recruit and convert it to shadow. &#8220;Come to the dark side&#8221; says the character Darth Vader in the Star Wars saga- a modern version of an old villain and an old battle: the dark side of human nature vs. the light.

A modern darkside highlighting the darkness-light struggle of human nature can be found in media and in particular, in tabloid journalism. The salacious, sensational, darkest and most titillating news makes headlines and makes money for those who peddle the darkest and most unsavory side of human nature. What in the human does this speak to? And as humans and consumers, are we aware of it, its affects and impact on people? And if so or even if not, are we complicit in our own darkness?

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Burroughs Welcome and Company Advertisement, 1895

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The etymology of &#8220;Tabloid&#8221; in 1884 is from a trademark of the Burroughs Welcome and Company, a nineteenth century pharmaceutical company in England that produced medicine originally in powder form. The tabloid was a pill made by compressing the powder into small bullet-like pills called tabloids, tablets and later tabs. The oid suffix is from oeides meaning like. By 1898, tabloid was being used figuratively to mean a compressed form or small dose of anything. The small newspaper with condensed articles was nicknamed the tabloid.

Alfred Harmsworth (1865-1922,) the first Viscount of Northcliffe made his publishing fortune with an empire that rescued failing newspapers and transforming them into pop culture news tabs that he used to influence public opinion and bring down institutions.

In the context of journalism, &#8220;tabloid&#8221; referred to the size of the newspaper and its abbreviated content. It has since evolved to mean a sensationalized newspaper with sometimes barely truthful content and even to include television which highlights celebrity news and scandals.

The tabloid industry began in earnest in England and tends to emphasize topics such as sensationalcrime stories, astrology,gossip about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk news. Often, tabloid newspaper allegations about the sexual practices, drug use, or private conduct of celebrities is borderline defamatory; in many cases, celebrities have successfully sued for libel, demonstrating that tabloid stories have defamed them. It is this sense of the word that led to some entertainment news programs to be called tabloid television. Tabloid newspapers are sometimes pejoratively called the gutter press.

Celebrities don&#8217;t always sue because of the time, energy and money investment in countering all the salacious tabloid libel because they realize that they would be in court almost every day. The tabloids count on that fact to escape culpability and are unscathed by the occasional judgment against them which is miniscule compared to profits and is &#8220;expensed&#8221; on balance sheets. The profit margin trumps the occasional lawsuit. The end justifies the means given the bottom line: that financial statements show profit.

Commonly called &#8220;Redtops&#8221; because of the identifying red headlines at the top, British tabloids tend to sensationalize and very aggressively pursue and feature celebrity gossip, hoaxes and take political positions. They often openly and boldly mock and ridicule the subjects of their stories.

American Tabloids

Tabloid journalism was exported to America where the papers are now featured in supermarkets at checkout aisles. American tabs are particularly notorious for their deliberate and over-the-top sensationalizing of stories.
The original American tabloid, The New York Sun, a gaudy example of the penny press made its debut on September 3, 1833 as the handiwork of Benjamin H. Day, a Springfield Massachusetts printer. Other specialty newspapers existed that had been around since colonial times but they were politically motivated and sold by subscription. Since most newspapers required subscriptions paid in advance and cost about ten dollars a year, the penny press became popular because for a penny a day, one could buy The New York Sun instead of a newspaper that might cost a week&#8217;s salary in advance for working families. In 1835, the New York Sunpublished a lengthy report about life on the moon discovered by a scientist with a powerful telescope, something it knew was fictional. Called the &#8220;moon hoax&#8221; that incident is famous in American journalism. Truth was not highly valued in the columns of The Sun where copy resembled simple and cheap romantic fiction.

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The Sun&#8217;s success spawned knock-off competitors and imitators. The Herald was the brainchild of James Gordon Bennett who actually had been a newsman and he built his empire into the most successful and influential newspapers in history. He broke from the partisan press and favored sensationalism and sordid crime stories with flaming headlines. His son, known for his public outrageous escapades took over after Bennett&#8217;s death and featured both respectable news and salacious underground drivel and ran thinly disguised advertisements for prostitutes until William Randolph Hearst complained.

The younger Bennett commissioned reporter Stanley with a bent for drama to find missionary David Livingston in Africa. This story was a ploy by The Herald to create an international sensation by not just reporting the news but making the news.

Hearst joined that same tradition with his San Francisco Examiner that borrowed from the doctrine of sensationalism when it gifted the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt with a wine and dine excursion that included a visit to an Opium Den, afterward writing up the lurid details for an expose` in his tabloid. Hearst hired Ambrose Bierce who wrote bitter contemporary columns that necessitated his carrying a pistol to protect himself from infuriated readers. He later hired women who would write expose`s about society&#8217;s ills gaining public sympathy (origin of sob story) that Hearst claimed as his mission: champion of the common man and protector of the weak.

Joseph Pulitzer&#8217;s New York World was Hearst&#8217;s competitor who hired &#8220;Nellie Bly&#8221; (pseudonym) who became one of the first famous female reporters. Pulitzer for whom the &#8220;Pulitzer Prize&#8221; is named was one of the top sensationalist journalists of his time selling crime, scandal and outrageous stunts. One of the most protracted circulation wars in journalism was waged between The New York World and The New York Morning Journal owned by Hearst. Both papers favored yellow journalism depicting life in New York: they had no hesitation in making news instead of reporting it. The movie Citizen Kane is a barely disguised biography of William Randolph Hearst directed by and starring Orson Welles.


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Today&#8217;s tabloids such as The Globe, The National Enquirer and The Sun use extremely aggressive and mean-spirited tactics to sell issues. They are distributed through magazine distribution channels like weeklies and paperback books. The validity of the stories in these gutter press samples can be called into question.

The tabloids readily admit to practicing what is called &#8220;checkbook journalism&#8221; and tout its legitimacy and justify their use of it because &#8216;everybody practices checkbook journalism.&#8217; This practice refers to paying for stories. There is willingness by tabloids to pay handsomely for information upon which to build their stories. They have publicly admitted that it doesn&#8217;t matter if it is truth; it only matters that somebody is willing to say it for a fee they are willing to pay. For a startling example of the tabloids own claim to checkbook journalism, see Frontline Episode &#8220;Tabloid Truth: The Michael Jackson Scandal.&#8221;

So, if someone is willing to say what the tabloid reporter is looking for&#8212;some salacious material about a celebrity or public figure to craft a story, the tab&#8217;s corporate headquarters willingly pay large sums of money to &#8220;sources.&#8221;
It doesn&#8217;t matter if it&#8217;s true. If it&#8217;s not true, they can always print a retraction; but meanwhile the headlines scream scandal and millions of papers sold make millions of dollars. In the tabloid business there are reporters and photographers, sources and &#8216;breaking news.&#8217; The game is to get a sensational story about a celebrity before your rival can break the story. It&#8217;s a world devoid of meticulous fact checking, scrutiny of sources or ethics. The credibility of the source doesn&#8217;t matter because the tabloids operate on the letting the cat out of the bag principle. It doesn&#8217;t matter if the story is true, what matters are headlines that scream attention. The retraction can come later and is guaranteed to not be front page news but buried in the back of the paper.

In 1993 when the Enquirer, for example, was looking for someone to corroborate the story that Michael Jackson had molested boys, they contacted Ronald Newt Sr. because they learned that Newt&#8217;s twin boys spent time at Neverland Ranch as aspiring performers learning from Jackson, their mentor.

The Enquirer offered the Newt boys&#8217; father Ronald, $200,000 to say that something untoward happened to his boys at Neverland with Michael Jackson. David Perell, Editor of the tabloid drew up a contract and the elder Newt refused to sign, saving it for evidence. In actuality, no children ever showed up to trade accusations about Jackson for cash after the scandal broke in 1993.

Ronald Newt said that the editor of the Enquirer coached the Newt family to &#8220;say he grabbed you on the butt. Say he grabbed you and touched you in any kind of way.&#8221; Perell also told the Newt family that he saw it as incumbent upon the Enquirer to take Michael Jackson down. He wanted to destroy him. He told us he &#8220;took all these other famous people down&#8212;all the major people that had scandals against them.&#8221; He said, 'We take these people down. That's what we do.'"

Celebrities learn to be on guard most of the time and on red alert in certain circumstances. It takes a sixth sense to be able to outthink a paparazzi or reporter dressed as a service or delivery personnel. It is well known too, that celebrities who badmouth tabloids or name names are punished for their indiscretions. Johnny Carson once belittled the Enquirer and found himself the target of a revenge assignment by one of its reporters. The paper tailed Carson for weeks until they got a photo of Sally Fields and him drinking champagne on his balcony. They then spun the story in the most malicious way to do the most damage.

For Brooke Shields&#8217; and Andre Agassi&#8217;s wedding, the Globe tabloid surveyed the surrounding landscape and decided a helicopter could not get close enough so they rented a cherry picker&#8212;a machine with an aerial hydraulic lift that can reach a height of 100 meters or more. The photographer raised the cherry picker to overlook the wedding and got the pictures for the tabloid. There was nothing that Brooke Shields could do since the intruders were not on her property.

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Lady Diana Spencer was the most visible target of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. The tabloids even went so far as to rent a submarine at a cost of $16,000 in order to get a shot of Diana lounging on the beach with a new love interest after her divorce from Charles and her divorce from the royal family. She was considered the most photographed woman in the world during the 15 years she was prominent on the world stage.

Lady Diana&#8217;s life was scrutinized at every turn and marked by salacious stories in the British tabloids. She had to learn to court them and employ diplomacy with them to get them to lower their voices about her life and private affairs. The tabloids reported her every move and at any given time there were 14 to 20 reporters tailing her, something she, as a private person, was unaccustomed to. She complained to the queen who set up a meeting with the tabloid editors where they were asked to exercise some discretion and restraint. In fact, nothing changed.
Diana was painted as unstable, dull, ditsy, depressed, and crazy by the British tabloid media. They exposed her anger at Charles who had resumed his affair with Camilla Bowles during their marriage. Diana commented that her marriage was crowded with too many people and that included Charles&#8217; mistress, the royal family and the media. Charles resented that the press was more interested in Diana than him and complained bitterly to his wife that his work as a head of state was not being taken seriously. Diana had not courted the attention; she was simply more interesting.

The tabloids exposed Diana&#8217;s post partum depression, a serious and common illness among new mothers. They portrayed her as mentally ill and unstable. She finally spoke frankly about it because she thought it might help others who were struggling with similar issues and to know their princess was flawed and shared a &#8220;commoner&#8217;s&#8221; illness. The tabloid press continued to portray her as unstable and misguided even as she championed the causes of children and an end to landmines as a viable strategy for war and conflict.

Diana knew that her royal children would be subject to the same treatment by the gutter press so she tried to be clever with a kind of cat and mouse game with them to garner favor. Diana saw this as a tactic; the queen reportedly saw it as scandalous betrayal of the royal family&#8217;s dignity. Diana learned to trade stories for coverage of her favorite charitable and humanitarian work. The efficacy of this kind of relationship with the press is something most celebrities question. Many claim their personal lives belong to themselves while their contributions to art and culture belong to the public.

The tone of the media changed and the gutter press became more aggressive when Rupert Murdoch began his influential tenure in media. A magnate of the Australian press, he set his sights on the acquisition of media all over the world and acquired significant numbers of media outlets on multiple continents.

Murdoch saw celebrity as a commodity to be tapped and exploited and his minions did exactly that with his acquisitions. His tactics, heavily criticized by the ethical press, politicians and celebrities, included becoming cozy with the leaders of countries and supporting their politics until he was in a position to influence those politics with his newspapers and television holdings which include British, Australian, American and other tabloid markets and the Fox Cable News Network.

In 2009 Murdoch was accused of using private investigators and criminal means to record and expose private messages among the celebrity and royal figures featured in his gutter press. His staffers illegally hacked phones, illegally accessed the target&#8217;s bank statements, confidential personal data including tax records, social security files and utility bills. Murdoch's News Group Newspapers paid about $1.6 million in out-of-court settlements to buy silence from public figures whose privacy had been invaded. Those targeted were cabinet ministers, MPs, Actors and sports stars.

The payments were secretly made and evidence was suppressed of hundreds more illegal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes News of the World and The Sun. Police have initiated inquires into at least 31 reporters and senior executives who illegally accessed records of 2,000 to 3,000 people including senior politicians.

Murdoch's reporters resort to extreme deception and illegal means to garner stories. They have disguised themselves as a sheik to sting celebrities and notables, and even posed as a sports team investor in order to gain an interview where the coach badmouthed his players and was fired. Murdoch&#8217;s News of the World boasts on its website that it "offers the biggest payment for stories."


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Medialoid is defined as mainstream media infected with tabloid journalism. The conversion occurred because the major news outlets began to relax some standards that had been in place since newspapers and television began. Some attribute partial blame to the O.J. Simpson and other celebrity trials, some to the arrival on the scene of a 24 hour news cycle that began when Ted Turner&#8217;s CNN did its first broadcast in 1980; some see it as an erosion over time. Somewhere along the evolution of journalism, the standards and the ethics of the profession and the media relaxed. In some cases they took a vacation; and in others that vacation is permanent. Many lament the loss of journalistic integrity and mourn the bygone days of the kind of professionalism embraced by Walter Cronkite who passed in 2009 and was for his 20 year tenure as a news anchor, considered &#8220;the most trusted man in America.&#8221;
Gossip columns began to show up in newspapers in the 1930s and the three decades between the 1960s and 1990s saw investigative reporting soar as underground newspapers flourished that were critical of government and contemporary social institutions. The alternative forms of journalism led to uncovering events and activities of government and other groups that normally went unnoticed. Those hot news decades: revealed Watergate, filmed the shootings at Kent State, saw conspiracies swirling around government and other institutions, outed organized crime, covered Black Civil Rights leaders and racial issues, captured riots and violence on tape, monitored the Viet Nam War, highlighted the Pentagon Papers, revealed Iran Contra and other events and saw the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Investigative journalism changed the industry forever because it established a mindset of penetration that continues today.

The line of demarcation between the media and the tabloids began to blur in the nineteen seventies but in 1998 it disappeared completely. That year conservative blogger Matt Drudge released a story about a relationship with then President Clinton and White House Aid Monica Lewinsky after Newsweek Magazine declined to publish it. For the next year the American press all sounded like tabloids as Americans were subjected to detailed information about the president&#8217;s private sexual proclivities. The cast of characters and the investigation into the scandal grew wider as time went on until it ended with the impeachment of a president.

The O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials did little to dissuade the media from their trajectory toward tabloid journalism. The trials of celebrities attract a lot of attention. The Simpson trial was televised and the judge was seen as pandering to the cameras in his courtroom; the Michael Jackson trial was not televised but a previously serious venue, Court TV turned tabloid when it reenacted the daily court proceedings for its evening viewers.

Joining the ranks of tabloid and sensationalist television are programs like Hard Copy, Inside Edition, A Current Affair and their domestic and international clones. Reality TV tends to use the same tactics of sensationalism, crowd psychology and public emotional hysteria to gain and keep viewers. Reality TV began with game shows and candid camera type series, and captured more and more viewers with its soap or docudramas like Big Brother and Survivor. It films in a kind of fly-on-the-wall method and features ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, caught up in fluid and changing or extreme situations. The public&#8217;s apparent appetite for reality TV has spawned many new shows some of which are exploitive of their cast and that feature a voyeuristic look into people&#8217;s private lives. Jon and Kate Plus Eight exploited a Hmong immigrant and his eight children and made their very contentious and public divorce fodder for the tabloids.

Tabloid tactics of cut and paste journalism has leaked into the Internet Blogosphere as well. In a recent case, Andrew Brietbart, conservative Republican commentator and blogger who originally wrote for the Drudge Report, spliced a film of Shirley Sherrod addressing the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in an attempt to paint this State Department Black woman as a racist and to embarrass the Obama Administration. The cable news channels picked up the story, did not fact check it but ran with it which triggered the NAACP and government officials to denounce her and call for her resignation. When the video of her speech was viewed in its entirety, it revealed the questionable journalistic tactics of the blogger and his agenda. It would seem it also might call into question the cable news cycle of repeating unverified information that seeks conflict but not all the facts. Sherrod reportedly plans to sue for damages to her livelihood and reputation. She is but one example of the casualties of tabloid reporting and media gone wild.


Effects of Body Bag Journalism

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&#8220;If it bleeds, it leads&#8221; is often the standard that local and cable news stations use when deciding what and how to broadcast the news of the day on nightly or 24 hour cycle programs. The way news is now reported has increased the negative effects on children according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Those changes include:

  • television channels and Internet services and sites which report the news 24 hours a day
  • television channels broadcasting live events as they are unfolding, in "real time"
  • increased reporting of the details of the private lives of public figures and role models
  • pressure to get news to the public as part of the competitive nature of the entertainment industry
  • detailed and repetitive visual coverage of natural disasters and violent acts

While there are issues surrounding parental warnings about sex and violence, increasing concern surrounds news programming. Research shows that children tend to imitate what they see and hear in the news&#8212;a contagion called the copy cat effect. Chronic and persistent exposure to violence and aggression can lead to fear, cynicism, desensitization and dehumanization. While actual crime is decreasing, reporting of crimes has increased by 240% and comprises 30% of a broadcast. Media exposure for the average child now is 6 hours per day, more than any other activity except sleep.

A Joint Statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association summarized the effects of violence as follows:


  • Viewing violence can lead to emotional desensitization towards violence in real life.

  • Children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children who are not so exposed.

  • Children exposed to violence are more likely to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior.

  • Viewing violence increases fear of becoming a victim of violence, with a resultant increase in self-protective behaviors and a mistrust of others.

The United States Surgeon General&#8217;s Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General also summarized the research in this area. A diverse body of research strongly suggests that exposure to violence in the media can increase children&#8217;s aggressive behavior in the short term with some studies providing long term evidence of violence.
The work championed by organizations such as Children Now, medical societies and others who call upon the FCC to revisit rules for journalism and programming clearly suggest that body-bag and sensationalized journalism bludgeons them into cynicism, resignation and fear. The more TV watched, the more exaggerated appears the level of crime in society and the stereotypes that accompany that sense of vulnerability as does the tendency to see the world as perpetually dangerous. When children are in the news, which is not often, about 40 to 50 percent of the stories feature them as perpetrators or victims of crimes. This encourages the stereotype of superpredators and encourages vindictive and violent responses to others. Fifty percent of children interviewed said they felt angry, sad or depressed after watching the news.

Oversight Bodies

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The first amendment right to free speech strikes grave trepidation in those who seek to make the media more humane and responsible. Censure is a hot topic as is the right to protect one&#8217;s sources. There are no official regulatory bodies that govern journalism and in the view of Columbia University, a solution is to implement a seal of approval that insures that media meets certain standard obligations. John Hamer of Columbia proposes something called the TAO of Journalism: Transparency, Accountability and Openness. Hamer says that anything other than some kind of standard for journalism and media is a double standard: &#8220;Journalists instinctively react negatively to anything that smacks of licensing, certification regulation, oversight&#8212;there is great resistance,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The attitude is, &#8216;Nobody can oversee us, we oversee everyone else.&#8217; When you think about it, it&#8217;s just a massive double standard.&#8221;

The Society of Professional Journalists has a code of ethics for its members. While the ethical standards are admirable, few of their ranks follow their own ethics guidelines:
Journalists should:

  • Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
  • Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.
  • Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.
  • Always question sources&#8217; motives before promising anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information. Keep promises.
  • Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
  • Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.
  • Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it.
  • Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story
  • Never plagiarize
  • Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so.
  • Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.
  • Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.
  • Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
  • Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
  • Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.
  • Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
  • Recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public's business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection.

Minimize Harm
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.

Journalists should:

  • Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
  • Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
  • Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
  • Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone&#8217;s privacy.
  • Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
  • Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
  • Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
  • Balance a criminal suspect&#8217;s fair trial rights with the public&#8217;s right to be informed.

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Journalists should:

  • Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
  • Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
  • Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
  • Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
  • Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
  • Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
  • Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

Be Accountable
Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

Journalists should:

  • Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
  • Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
  • Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
  • Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
  • Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Conclusion

There appears to be no real conclusion to the dilemma presented by modern media, or is there? It seems clear that the media, journalism, and television may be entirely out of control in covering the goings on of leaders and celebrities in our culture. The death of Lady Diana, the protracted targeting and caricature-like inaccurate portrayal of Michael Jackson over decades, the impeachment of a president for private bedroom behaviors, the suicide of a White House Counsel Vince Foster because &#8216;Here in Washington ruining people is considered sport,&#8217; the scandals and outings and name calling and epithets and the obsession with celebrity, getting the dirt and salivating over the prospect of being the first to break the juicy story is as much an indictment of the constituents (consumers) as the perpetrators of this misanthropic means of treating people in an increasingly impolite society.

We have seen evidence that this frenzy of voyeurism and the need to know all the gore or juicy details of someone else&#8217;s private life causes societal ills and does not benefit our children or our own humanity. Tabloid journalism kills people. Diana died in a car accident while being chased the multi-thousandth time by paparazzi. Michael Jackson was darkly exploited by the media for profit over years and was unjustly accused of unspeakable acts toward children in an extortion attempt, yet many still do not know he was innocent because his exoneration and the details were not widely reported. Journalists went for the sordid details of the accusations instead of the dismantling of its veracity through cross examination. The negative aspects of an event become the focus because that is what gets attention, that is what sells the product and keeps the gutter press in business.

Where are the lines drawn of civility, good taste, kindness, compassion, empathy, dignity, respect, professionalism and humane restraint? When consumers consume products without examining their own habits and the effects of those habits, or they thoughtlessly consume products that harm others regularly for profit, they are complicit in the demeaning and destruction of others and of their own humanity. When the humanity of others means so little, the whole race suffers dehumanization. The soul of humanity splinters as does the psyche. It&#8217;s a deep and haunting wounding that lingers and permeates the collective consciousness.

Increasing tolerance and psychological anesthesia toward the slaying of others&#8217; images, reputations, livelihoods, life&#8217;s work and privacy becomes a cultural meme that indicts each of the members and it&#8217;s whole. When an industry tolerates the death of one global humanitarian and the slow slaying of another over time, and the consumers of that industry do nothing, more casualties will come. It&#8217;s inevitable. The editors of the tabloid press have admitted their culpability in the death of Lady Diana but nothing appears to have changed. Does this practice of using the avenue of communications and media to create larger-than-life personas built to pinnacles only to serve as fulcrums for their demise at our hands and minds, constitute nothing less than a modern day gladiator sport?

Both Princess Diana and Michael Jackson were globally recognized cheerleaders for humanity evidenced by their body of work. Both leveraged their fame to become global humanitarians and philanthropic stars. Had Bill Clinton been completely humiliated never to recover belying the comeback kid moniker he earned, the humanitarian relief response to Hurricane Katrina&#8217;s destruction of New Orleans, the response to 9/11, the Asian Tsunami and other disasters would have claimed more casualties because Clinton has the charisma to inspire and mobilize philanthropy. When asked, he stepped up to help. None of these globally recognized humanitarians turned their back on humanity when they had every reason to do just that. Humanity didn&#8217;t treat them very well.

The real question becomes: when we portray ourselves in this light of intolerance, demonstrate glee at the downfall of others, what do we do to our own psyches? What do we do to our own humanity? How does humanity lose both now and in the future from this brand of inhumane treatment? And how then do we create peace or a humane narrative on this planet for the humans who inhabit and inherit it? Maybe it&#8217;s a contemporary question worth looking into because it defines who we are as humans, it defines our humanity and it determines our future.
Text, Discussion Questions and Bibliography were written by: Reverend Barbara Kaufmann

Discussion Questions

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

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The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law "respecting an establishment of religion." impeding the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.


  1. What does &#8220;freedom of speech&#8221; mean? What does it mean for/to you?
  2. What does &#8220;freedom of the press&#8221; mean? What does it mean for/to you?
  3. Do you regularly read any newspapers, magazines or periodicals? What do you read and why?
  4. Do you regularly watch certain TV programs? What do you watch and why?
  5. Do you listen to talk radio? What do you listen to and why?
  6. When you read publications, watch TV or listen to talk radio, what are you expecting from those media?
  7. How might media, journalism and television have a bias? Be slanted? Why would that happen? How?
  8. Do you expect the media to report the truth? Why or why not? How do you feel about media that invents or distorts the truth? How do you feel about being asked to be a consumer of non-truths?
  9. How do you feel about &#8220;checkbook journalism?&#8221; Is it fair? Legitimate? Morally right? Discuss.
  10. As a consumer of media, how are you impacted by that media? What are your expectations? Do you apply standards to the media? What are they?
  11. Do you believe the media are fair? Accurate? Humane? What examples can you give?
  12. As a consumer, do you feel you have a right to expect certain standards from media? What standards?
  13. As a consumer of media, do you feel you have some say or some power over what is printed or shared publicly? Or do you feel powerless?
  14. Do you have an opinion about corporate media? How do you feel about one owner owning most of the newsprint or airwaves? Explain. Do you feel it can be beneficial or detrimental to the consuner? How?
  15. Do you believe the media should follow its own guidelines with respect to what is published or reported? Why or why not?
  16. Do you feel that the public has a right to know what goes on in government? In the private lives of citizens? In the private lives of celebrities? Why or why not?
  17. Have you ever felt concern, pride, skepticism, disgust with what is being reported or how it is reported? Do you make your feelings known? How? Why do you or why do you not make them known?
  18. Many people have expressed their exasperation with media and how journalism and broadcasting has devolved from the high standards of the past that included fact checking and confirming sources and information from multiple sources before publishing something as fact. If people are fed up with the media how could they go about making their feelings known? How do you think that might change things?
  19. The media position is that they only provide what the public clamors for. You are the public. Do you feel powerless or powerful to change things? Would you consider changing your habits and your consumption of materials to support your position?
  20. In your opinion, is the media out of control? Why or why not? Should it change? How or why?
  21. Who do you believe media has the power to harm? Do you think it has harmed? How?
  22. Do you believe the media has constructed, hastened or created someone&#8217;s demise? If so, in what way? How do you feel about that?
  23. Do you believe the media has killed people? Why or why not? If so, how? How do you feel about that?
  24. Should the media target certain individuals? Why or why not? How do you feel about damage to an individual? Should the media be more humane? How?
  25. What does &#8220;fifteen minutes of fame&#8221; mean? Discuss. How would you feel and what would you do if it were your turn for the famous &#8220;fifteen minutes of fame&#8221; and the coverage was positive? What about a negative &#8220;fifteen minutes of fame?&#8221; Could that destroy your relationships? Your career? Your reputation? Your life? Discuss.
  26. Do you &#8220;vote with your dollars?&#8221; In other words, if something is sub-par to standards or needs restructuring how does the consumer go about letting the vendor know?
  27. If it were prudent to change media and how it is presented or consumed, how would you go about doing that while protecting the first amendment? Can it be done? How? Convene in groups and brainstorm ways this could be accomplished.
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The Princess and the Toads: A Fairy Tale.

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She lay crumpled and dying in the space behind the front seat of the smoking car, her beautiful face still intact, her injuries hidden, but fatal. Smoke streamed from the wreckage, as undetected, the mangled artery leaked her life force as it began to ebb away. Was there a fleeting moment of awareness as she thought of her young sons, her charmed life, of love lost and dreams delayed? Dazed, she looked around trying to comprehend what had happened. Did she know? She saw the tabloid paparazzi around her and managed to say &#8220;leave me alone.&#8221; Those were her last words. We are left with one question: Why? Why Diana and why that way? A Camelot story, a Fairy Tale Princess, a queen who collected hearts. How could she die in a senseless car crash in a dark Paris tunnel?

Diana was first the peoples&#8217; princess and then their queen of hearts. Lovely, with an acceptable family name and pedigree approved by the royal family, she was a natural choice for Charles, heir to the throne of Britain. Theirs seemed like a fairy tale love story, he the eligible bachelor and future king and she, the demure and shy school girl who met and fell in love with her &#8220;prince charming.&#8221;

The royal and opulent wedding was broadcast live on television as hundreds of millions of viewers virtually joined the royals and guests at St. Paul&#8217;s Cathedral in London on July 29, 1981. The monarchy, which had settled into an attic dust familiarity with its subjects suddenly found new life, new interest and popularity thanks to Diana who entered fresh faced, shy, charming and restless.

The fairy tale image persisted for awhile as the press respectfully reported news about the couple. A trend soon began though as the press focused more on Diana than the prince. Her every move was reported and the fashion world adopted her as an icon; the kingdom, it seemed, embraced her. Charles made official visits and gave speeches as his role dictated but the press often ignored him in favor of his newsworthy and fashionable bride. The glare of the media and its obvious bias caused problems for the couple.

The media hounded them giving them barely a moment to themselves and little privacy. Diana, unused to the attention tried to cope the best she could but felt unsupported by her mate, who was jealous of the coverage she garnered. The more media attention that focused on her, the more isolated she became and she was later to say, the farther the fall from grace.

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Photograph by Kaveeta Kaul

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Her pregnancy captured the imagination and attention of Brits as they navigated it with her. The pregnancy was difficult and she contracted post-partum depression afterward. Although a common ailment among new mothers, the tabloids picked up the story of &#8220;depression&#8221; and ran with it. The tabloids exposed her as depressed and unbalanced as they painted her as a daft and ungrounded young woman.

About the same time, she began her battle with Bulimia and self-injury which provides relief from isolation, self loathing, numbness, and feelings of low self esteem. She later explained that all the self defeating behavior was from feeling inadequate to cope with the intensity and demands of her role in the spotlight, and because she was not given time to acclimate to her life as it turned upside down with one act&#8212;that of marriage.

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Almost overnight she became the most photographed, hunted and interesting figure in modern society and not just in her own country, but around the world. She had no time to define herself or her direction. Her life felt like a foreign country to her. She didn&#8217;t understand the interest and frenzy that swirled around her and she felt her connection to her husband was slipping away because of his unhappiness about her popularity, the stiffness and disapproval of the royal family and her inability to handle the pressures of her position.

As their romance cooled, Charles turned to an old flame and rekindled their relationship. Diana sensed this change in her husband and knew the reason. She was devastated and went deeper into her isolation and despair. The tabloids exploited her circumstances and people bought the tabloids. Diana took to reading them to find out how she was being portrayed in the public eye.

As she learned more about how to navigate her life and its complexities, she felt she had to become adept at courting the media and playing the game of trying to craft and manipulate her own image. She had to get cozy with the tabloid editors in order to manage her own public image and her children&#8217;s image. The press was relentless in their pursuit of salacious tidbits of her life. She curried favor with the gutter press often to promote the new and ongoing charity work she was engaged in.

She had, at one time, made a self deprecating comment to a little girl during a photo op saying that she (Diana) was &#8220;thick as a plank,&#8221; a remark designed to put the child at ease. The tabloids picked it up and forever after painted her as mentally a bit thick, ditsy and unbalanced. She regretted making the remark to the little girl as that comment followed her and colored every feature story that appeared from then on.

The lead characters in the royal marriage that turned out to be anything but fairy tale, were ill suited and their romantic relationship began first turning cool, and then started to unravel. That seemed to signal open season to the tabloids that hunted and hounded Diana as one of the world&#8217;s most famous and beloved women only to excoriate and ridicule her in the press.

Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales was a shy and timid beauty when she married Prince Charles but in a few years, had become a sophisticated champion of causes and an admired fashion icon. Diana, the most photographed woman in the world, learned how to leverage her fame and popularity and bend it to her will. Had she lived in another era, she might have been a subject for poets and playwrights but in the modern age, she became a tabloid princess surrounded by not by frogs who were gentlemen-in-disguise, but toads who carried poison ink.

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Unused to being in the spotlight, Diana found it hard to cope with the frenzy that followed her and recorded her every move. She and Charles rarely found themselves alone and she icily reminded him of that during a family vacation, was overheard by a tabloid reporter and the Charles and Diana tabloid war began in earnest.

Diana&#8217;s first taste of the glare of paparazzi flashbulbs had come when a photographer caught her pose with her skirt backlit from the sun. She was wearing leggings but that did not hide her shapely figure which landed on the front pages of Britain&#8217;s gutter press. Her majesty was not pleased and their frosty relationship continued as the tabloids targeted both Diana and Charles and the royal mortification became impassible. It wasn&#8217;t until after her death and people all over the world mourned her loss in the streets, that the queen understood that she had captured hearts across the globe. She then agreed to fly the flag at half staff and to join the mourners in a proper funeral for a beloved public figure.

The tabloid industry then was beginning to be dominated by Rupert Murdoch, media magnate who bought up newspapers round the world to build a yellow journalistic empire. Murdoch saw Charles&#8217; return from service in the military and bachelorhood as an exploitable situation, saw the royal family as public property and said, &#8216;We want to be the first to tell the British public who Prince Charles is going to marry.&#8217; Murdoch wanted his British paper The Sun to be different, upbeat, rebellious and a little bit naughty. He patterned his paper after the Daily Mirror who taunted the royals and chided their members publicly.

Diana cited the tabloid press as guilty of contributing to the demise of her marriage. She and Charles were quite literally never alone; she was perpetually stalked by paparazzi and gutter press. Often a drawback of the curtains revealed perhaps 20 media vans or more at any given time outside their residence. Even their marriage itself was conscripted by the tabloids who reported so much about Diana and Charles that the press felt they had license to ask on their front pages if Charles was going to marry her. The wedding came about when Charles had no answer for them because he had no reason to not marry the young woman. The newspapers chose Charles&#8217; mate for him and since there was no reason to dispute them, he agreed.

Rupert Murdoch, being colonial, didn't want to kowtow to the Royal Family so his instructions through the Editor Kevin McKenzie, were: 'look, stop worshipping these people, stop treating them as gods. They're ordinary human beings and they will help sell newspapers. Let's go out there and get the real stories.&#8217; The competition between Royal Correspondents in those days was ferocious, absolutely savage. The pressure was unbearable at times because if a rival broke a new story about Charles and Diana, a reporter somewhere got a late night phone call with orders to find a story to match or surpass it and it had better be sensational. McKenzie would never hold back on a story. He wasn&#8217;t ruffled if the story was never checked out. He didn&#8217;t care if feelings were trampled, or if the story had only one source and was uncorroborated or if the story harmed reputations. He was considered reckless and cruel by colleagues. His philosophy: he had to fill pages, he wanted stories about royals that were sensational and he didn&#8217;t care it if wasn&#8217;t true.

Private Eye was the United Kingdom&#8217;s number one best-selling news and current affairs magazine that used humor, satire, social and political observations and investigative journalism to publish the magazine read by more than 700,000 Brits. Its editor Ian Hislop, was the most sued man in English legal history and he reigned during the Charles and Diana royal era. Private Eye is still published and popular today and still investigates and exposes subjects caught in the sights of its lenses. Richard Ingrams, Editor of Private Eye is known for his particularly caustic brand of journalism as he targeted Jewish writers and the pro-Israel Jewish lobby, homosexuals and Tony Blair supporters during his tenure from 1963 to 1986.

After Diana&#8217;s marriage was over the press continued to stalk her looking for the latest sensational story. Her attempts at having relationships with other men made headlines all over the tabloids of the world and bled into the regular press. The appetite for Diana news looked insatiable. The decoy tactics to avoid press were employed regularly as getaway routes changed last minute. One of those decoy tactics and unscheduled routes ended in an early grave for Lady Di. The official investigation cited the driver&#8217;s intoxication as the cause but a parallel later investigation found the paparazzi culpable.

Tabloid Editors Admit Culpability
The editors of the three biggest selling tabloid newspapers at the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales had disclosed for the first time their own share of guilt over the accident that killed her.

&#8220;The editors of The Sun, Daily Mirror and News of the World have conceded that they had helped create an atmosphere in which the paparazzi, who were chasing Diana when her car crashed in a Paris underpass, were out of control.

Phil Hall, who was editor of the News of the World, said it was a circle of culpability involving the readers who demanded more photographs, the photographers who chased her and the newspapers that published the pictures. "A big Diana story could add 150,000 sales. So we were all responsible," he said.

Mr. Hall, speaking on the ITV1 documentary Diana&#8217;s Last Summer, said: "I felt huge responsibility for what happened and I think everyone in the media did. If the paparazzi hadn&#8217;t been following her the car wouldn&#8217;t have been speeding and, you know, the accident may never have happened."

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​

The Sunday Mirror bought the paparazzi pictures, published three weeks before the princess&#8217;s death, which first showed the seriousness of her liaison with Dodi Fayed and encouraged the Paris chase.

Stuart Higgins, who edited The Sun, told The Daily Telegraph: "The death of Princess Diana was the most tragic story during my period as editor. I have often questioned my role, the paper&#8217;s role and the media&#8217;s role generally in her death and the events leading up to it. The tabloids created a frenzy and appetite around Diana.&#8221;

They agreed to not publish the photographs of her taken as she lay dying in the car.

In the period following her death that remorse caused them to admit their complicity and their responsibility in her death but that remorse was and has been short lived.

During the heyday of Princess, and then Lady Diana, Harry Arnold, royal reporter for The Sun from 1976 to 1990 was in charge of getting the latest scoops on Charles and Diana for The Sun said in an interview with PBS Frontline:
&#8220;It was the advent of Private Eye which people overlooked that I think was very influential.Private Eye was in a sense saying things about people that nobody else was saying and I've always accepted - and Richard Ingrams I know agrees with me - that Private Eye was a big factor in getting newspapers not to be more intrusive but to be more candid if you like about people."

Arnold continues: "I think that probably we have passed a point of good manners. I think intrusion has gone too far. I don't believe there can be a law on privacy for the Royal Family or anybody else because I don't think it's workable. Where I think the weakness is the failure of respected proprietors, not all of whom as I say are British citizens, the failure of proprietors and editors to set a standard for their own newspaper."

Lady Diana, queen of hearts and global humanitarian might agree; a lack of good manners cost her a great deal of suffering during her lifetime and finally, in one dark moment in tabloid history, her life.

Discussion Questions
Great Britain does not have a First Amendment as Americans do but they do have codes of ethics. The codes request fair and respectful representation of media subjects. Check the following page for sources of Ethics Codes. Do you think these guidelines were/are followed? Should there be a &#8220;first amendment&#8221; philosophy of journalism around the world?

  1. What is your personal definition of fair? Do you feel the press was fair to Diana? Why or why not? What do you believe is fair in journalism?
  2. Should the royals be treated differently in the press? Why or why not?
  3. Do you believe that the tabloids did harm to Diana? Do you believe they were responsible for her death? Why or why not? Do you believe the paparazzi have responsibility in Diana's death? How? Why?
  4. Could this car crash have been prevented? How or why?
  5. Is there a need to change the standards governing media, paparazzi and stories in the press?
  6. Do you believe the media affected this couple? The marriage? How?
  7. Do you personally want to know the details of the personal lives of the famous or celebrities? Why or why not? Do you believe you have a right to know the intimate details of public figures?
  8. Do you believe the media is humane? Do you believe it should be? Would you suggest changes? What changes?
  9. Diana&#8217;s death ended all her humanitarian work around the planet. Does that constitute a loss to humanity? How? How does one measure that loss?
  10. If you had the power to make the rules for how journalists and journalism are to behave, what guidelines would you draft? Confer in groups and make a list of guidelines.
  11. As a consumer of the media, do you believe you share the guilt if someone is harmed? As a consumer do you have responsibilities? If so, please list them.

Bibliography

The Princess and the Press: Frontline Published Interviews with reporters speaking about Lady Diana:

  • Harry Arnold was royal reporter for The Sun, 1976-1990. He and his partner, photographer Arthur Edwards, were charged with getting the latest scoops on Charles and Diana.
  • Lord W. F. Deedes was editor of the Daily Telegraph (1974-1986) Former Editor and Currently a columnist for the paper.
  • Arthur Edwards: royal photographer for The Sun teamed up with The Sun's royal reporter, Harry Arnold. They were responsible for covering Princess Diana and the Royal Family.
  • Roy Greenslade was editor of The Daily Mirror, 1990-1991 and assistant editor atThe Sun for six years.
  • Glenn Harvey: Freelance photographer who covered Princess Diana.
  • Max Hastings: Was editor of The Daily Telegraph, 1986-1995.
  • Anthony Holden: Author of two books on Prince Charles.
  • Simon Jenkins: Former Editor of The Times, 1990-1992.
  • Ken Lennox: Former Royal photographer for The Daily Mirror, 1986-1994.
  • Andrew Morton: Royal reporter who has written several books on the Royal Family, including Diana: Her True Story, on which Princess Diana secretly collaborated.
  • Richard Stott: Former Editor of The Daily Mirror, 1991-1992.
  • James Whitaker: Reported on the Royal Family since the 1960s. He is The Daily Mirror's royal reporter.
  • Sir Peregrine Worsthorne: Columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.
  • Friedman, Roger. Comments quoted from an Interview with Fox News

BBC Panorama Interview Martin Bashir 1995
British Public Broadcasting Company

Harry Arnold PBS Frontline Interview
American Public Broadcasting Company Documentary Films

Private Eye British Magazine
British Newspaper and Online Journal

David Rowan, Editor Wired UK, Interview with Richard Ingrams, Blog 2005
British Online Journal Magazine

Diana: Editors Admit Guilt over Death by Andrew Pierce Published: 21 Aug 2007
British Newspaper and Online Journal

Text for the article, Discussion Questions and Bibliography were written and prepared by: Reverend Barbara Kaufmann
 
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[h=1]Editors Admit Guilt Over Death[/h]
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The editors of the three biggest selling tabloid newspapers at the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales have disclosed for the first time their own share of guilt over the accident that killed her.

The editors of The Sun, Daily Mirror and News of the World have conceded that they had helped create an atmosphere in which the paparazzi, who were chasing Diana when her car crashed in a Paris underpass, were out of control.
Phil Hall, who was editor of the News of the World, said it was a circle of culpability involving the readers who demanded more photographs, the photographers who chased her and the newspapers that published the pictures.
"A big Diana story could add 150,000 sales. So we were all responsible," he said.
Mr Hall, speaking on the ITV1 documentary Diana’s Last Summer, said: "I felt huge responsibility for what happened and I think everyone in the media did.
"If the paparazzi hadn’t been following her the car wouldn’t have been speeding and, you know, the accident may never have happened."
He said the princess had often tipped off his newspaper about photo opportunities and invited his executives to lunch at Kensington Palace. "She wanted to try to be on the front foot over her media coverage," he said.
After the death of the princess in Aug 1997, the tabloids said they would ban photographs taken by the paparazzi.
The Sunday Mirror bought the paparazzi pictures, published three weeks before the princess’s death, which first showed the seriousness of her liaison with Dodi Fayed and encouraged the Paris chase.
Stuart Higgins, who edited The Sun, told The Daily Telegraph: "The death of Princess Diana was the most tragic story during my period as editor. I have often questioned my role, the paper’s role and the media’s role generally in her death and the events leading up to it.
"The tabloids created a frenzy and appetite around Diana. But in the end I believe it was just a terrible accident, caused by a drunken driver and possibly because of the lack of the high level of police and security protection that she had enjoyed previously."
Patrick Jephson, her former private secretary, said: "They would chase the royal motorcade on motorcycles. They had pillion passengers carrying heavy television cameras. It all contributed to the sense of being inside a Wild West stagecoach while bandits were attacking it."
Piers Morgan, the then editor of the Daily Mirror, accepted that as editors they had not done enough to curb the wilder excesses of freelance photographers. He said: "Everyone working on national newspapers, in the first few days after she died, felt a collective sense that the paparazzi were out of control in relation to Diana. She was the biggest celebrity we have ever seen and it got completely out of hand."
Asked if it had changed, he said: "No one person attracts the attention she used to. I don’t think any single human being had more fascination to the public, was more intruded upon, or when it suited colluded more."
Mr Morgan said the princess had no choice but to try to dictate some of the media coverage. "I went to lunch with her at Kensington Palace. She pointed out of a window showing me 12 vans and motorbikes from foreign media organisations. That was her daily life. You realised although she did collude she did not have much choice."
He said her death was a "ghastly accident" but added: "We in the media were culpable in allowing the paparazzi to become ridiculously over the top."
Source: This article is reprinted with the permission of Telegraph.co.uk:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560857/Princess-Diana-Editors-admit-guilt-over-death.html.




 
Voices Education "Words and Violence" Curriculum - inspired by Michael Jackson and Lady Diana

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One of the Most Shameful Episodes in Journalistic History

written by Charles Thomson
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Charles Thomson is an award winning writer. Specialising in music and celebrity journalism, Charles has contributed to publications including The Sun, The Guardian, MOJO, Wax Poetics and the Huffington Post.

Charles is best known for breaking numerous global exclusives about Michael Jackson. In March 2009 he was the first journalist to break concrete news of the star's 50 concert comeback, working with The Sun to snap exclusive pictures of Jackson arriving at a private airstrip in Luton to announce his UK gigs.

A soul and funk music specialist, Charles's interviewees have included calypso pioneerEddy Grant, MOBO winner Sway DaSafo, Grammy Lifetime Achievement winner Jack Ashford and 'Godfather of Soul' James Brown. In November 2009 Charles won a prestigious Guardian award for his article 'James Brown: The Lost Album', which appeared in JIVE magazine. Charles is also known internationally for challenging biased and inaccurate reporting.

He has been interviewed by radio and television stations including Sky News, BBC World Service and KPFA-FM.

It was five years ago today that twelve jurors unanimously acquitted Michael Jackson on various charges of child molestation, conspiracy and providing alcohol to a minor. It is difficult to know how history will remember the Michael Jackson trial. Perhaps as the epitome of western celebrity obsession. Perhaps as a 21st century lynching. Personally, I think it will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in journalistic history.

It's not until you find yourself digging through newspaper archives and re-watching hours of TV coverage that you truly understand the magnitude of the media's failings. It was industry-wide. No doubt, there were certain reporters and even certain publications and TV stations that overtly favored the prosecution, but many of the media's shortcomings were institutional. In a media obsessed with soundbites, how to you reduce eight hours of testimony into two sentences and remain accurate? In an era of rolling news and instant blogging, how do you resist the temptation to dash out of the courtroom at the earliest opportunity to break news of the latest salacious allegations, even if it means missing a slice of the day's testimony?

Looking back on the Michael Jackson trial, I see a media out of control. The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion and misinformation is almost beyond comprehension. Reading the court transcripts and comparing them to the newspaper cuttings, the trial that was relayed to us didn't even resemble the trial that was going on inside the courtroom. The transcripts show an endless parade of seedy prosecution witnesses perjuring themselves on an almost hourly basis and crumbling under cross examination. The newspaper cuttings and the TV news clips detail day after day of heinous accusations and lurid innuendo.

It was November 18th 2003 when 70 sheriffs swooped on Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. As soon as news of the raid broke, news channels abandoned their schedules and switched to 24 hour coverage. When it emerged that Jackson was accused of molesting young cancer survivor Gavin Arvizo, the boy who famously held the singer's hand in Martin Bashir's 'Living With Michael Jackson', the media went into overdrive. Networks were so obsessed by the Jackson scandal that a terrorist attack in Turkey went almost entirely unreported, with only CNN bothering to broadcast George Bush and Tony Blair's joint press conference about the disaster.

All three major networks immediately set about producing hour-long specials on the Jackson case, apparently undeterred by the fact that nothing was yet known about the allegations and prosecutors weren't answering questions. CBS dedicated an episode of 48 Hours Investigates to the arrest, while NBC's Dateline and ABC's 20/20 also rushed out Jackson specials. Within two days of the Neverland raid, and before Jackson had even been arrested, VH1 announced a half-hour documentary called 'Michael Jackson Sex Scandal'.

Daily Variety described the Jackson story as "a godsend for... media outlets, particularly cable news channels and local stations looking to pump up Nielsen numbers in the final week of the all-important November sweeps."
Daily Variety was right. Celebrity-oriented news shows saw figures spike when the Jackson story hit. Viewing figures for Access Hollywood were up 10% on the previous week. Entertainment Tonight and Extra both achieved season best audience numbers and Celebrity Justice also enjoyed an 8% rise. Newspapers reacted just as hysterically as TV stations. 'Sicko!' shrieked the New York Daily News. '*****: Now Get Out Of This One' goaded the New York Post.

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The Sun - Britain's biggest newspaper - ran an article titled 'He's Bad, He's Dangerous, He's History'. The piece branded Jackson an 'ex-black ex-superstar', a 'freak' and a 'twisted individual' and called for his children to be taken into care. "If he weren't a pop idol with piles of cash to hide behind," it said, "he would have been picked up years ago."

Encouraged by the audience boosts the Jackson scandal had produced, media outlets made it their mission to milk the case for all that they could. Entertainment Weekly'sTom Sinclair wrote, "Media mavens, from the tackiest tabloid reporter to the nattiest network news anchor, are in overdrive scrambling to fill column inches and airtime with ***** scoops and talking heads."

"Pressure on news people is enormous," attorney Harland Braun told Sinclair. "So lawyers you've never heard of wind up on television talking about cases that they have no connection to." Sinclair added, "And not just lawyers. Everyone from doctors, writers, and psychiatrists to convenience-store clerks who once waited on Jackson are weighing in on TV and in print."

While the media was busy badgering a host of quacks and distant acquaintances for their views on the scandal, the team of prosecutors behind the latest Jackson case was engaging in some highly questionable behavior - but the media didn't seem to care.

During the Neverland raid District Attorney Tom Sneddon - the prosecutor who unsuccessfully pursued Jackson in 1993 - and his officers breached the terms of their own search warrant by entering Jackson's office and seizing hoards of irrelevant business papers. They also illegally raided the office of a PI working for Jackson's defense team and lifted defense documents from the home of the singer's personal assistant.

Sneddon also appeared to be tampering with fundamental elements of his case whenever evidence came to light which undermined the Arvizo family's claims. For instance, when the DA found out about two taped interviews in which the entire Arvizo family sang Jackson's praises and denied any abuse, he introduced a conspiracy charge and claimed they'd been forced to lie against their will.

In a similar instance, Jackson's lawyer Mark Geragos appeared on NBC in January 2004 and announced that the singer had a 'concrete, iron-clad alibi' for the dates on the charge sheet. By the time Jackson was re-arraigned in April for the conspiracy charge, the molestation dates on the rap sheet had been shifted by almost two weeks.
Sneddon was later caught seemingly trying to plant fingerprint evidence against Jackson, allowing accuser Gavin Arvizo to handle adult magazines during the grand jury hearings, then bagging them up and sending them away for fingerprint analysis.

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Not only did the majority of the media overlook this flurry of questionable and occasionally illegal activity on the part of the prosecution, it also seemed perfectly content to perpetuate damning propaganda on the prosecution's behalf, despite a complete lack of corroborative evidence. For example, Diane Dimond appeared on Larry King Live days after Jackson's arrest and spoke repeatedly about a 'stack of love letters' the star had supposedly written to Gavin Arvizo.

"Does anyone here... know of the existence of these letters?" asked King.

"Absolutely," Dimond replied. "I do. I absolutely know of their existence!"

"Diane, have you read them?"

"No, I have not read them."

Dimond admitted that she'd never even seen the letters, let alone read them, but said she knew about them from "high law enforcement sources". But those love letters never materialized. When Dimond said she 'absolutely knew' of their existence she was basing her comments solely on the words of police sources. At best, the police sources were parroting the Arvizos' allegations in good faith. At worst, they'd concocted the story themselves to sully Jackson's name. Either way, the story went around the world with not a shred of evidence to support it.

It was over a year between Jackson's arrest and the beginning of his trial and the media was forced to try to pad the story out for as long as they could in the interim. Aware that Jackson was bound by gag order and therefore powerless to respond, prosecution sympathizers started leaking documents such as Jordan Chandler's 1993 police statement. The media, hungry for scandal and sensationalism, pounced on them.

At the same time, allegations sold to tabloid TV shows by disgruntled ex-employees in the 1990s were constantly re-hashed and presented as news. Small details of the Arvizo family's allegations would also periodically leak.

While most media outlets reported these stories as allegations rather than facts, the sheer amount and frequency of stories connecting Jackson to ugly sexual abuse, coupled with his inability to refute them, had a devastating effect on the star's public image.

The trial began in early 2005 with jury selection. Asked by NBC about prosecution and defense jury selection tactics, Dimond said the difference was that prosecutors would be looking for jurors who had a sense of 'good versus evil' and 'right and wrong'. No sooner had the jurors been selected than Newsweek was trying to undermine them, claiming that a middle class jury would be unable to fairly judge a family of lower class accusers. In an article titled 'Playing the Class Card' the magazine said, "The Jackson trial may hinge on something other than race. And we don't mean the evidence."

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As the trial kicked into gear, it became quickly apparent that the case was full of holes. The prosecution's only 'evidence' was a stack of heterosexual porn magazines and a couple of legal art books. Thomas Mesereau wrote in a court motion, "The effort to try Mr. Jackson for having one of the largest private libraries in the world is alarming. Not since the dark day of almost three quarters of a century ago has anyone witnessed a prosecution which claimed that the possession of books by well known artists were evidence of a crime against the state."

Gavin Arvizo's brother, Star, took the stand early in the trial and claimed to have witnessed two specific acts of molestation but his testimony was completely inconsistent. Regarding one alleged act, he claimed in court that Jackson had been fondling Gavin, but in a previous description of the same incident he told a wildly different story, claiming Jackson had been rubbing his penis against Gavin's buttocks. He also told two different stories about the other alleged act on two consecutive days in court.

During cross examination Jackson's lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, showed the boy a copy of Barely Legal and repeatedly asked if it was the specific edition Jackson had shown him and his brother. The boy insisted that it was, only for Mesereau to reveal that it was published in August 2003; five months after the Arvizo family had left Neverland. But this information went almost entirely unreported, the media focusing on the boy's allegations rather than the cross examination which undermined them. Allegations make good soundbites. Complex cross examination does not.

When Gavin Arvizo took the stand, he claimed that Jackson had instigated the first act of molestation by telling him that all boys had to masturbate or else they would turn into rapists. But Mesereau showed under cross examination that the boy had previously admitted his grandmother made that comment, not Jackson, meaning that the whole molestation story was predicated on a lie.

Under cross examination the boy severely undermined the prosecution's conspiracy charge by claiming he'd never felt afraid at Neverland and he'd never wanted to leave. His accounts of the alleged molestation also differed from his brother's.

Unfortunately for Jackson, Gavin Arvizo's cross examination was all but ignored as newspapers giggled and gossiped about what became known as 'pajama day'. On the first day of the boy's direct examination Jackson slipped in his shower, bruised his lung and was rushed to hospital. When Judge Rodney Melville ordered a bench warrant for Jackson's arrest unless he arrived within an hour, the singer sped to the courthouse in the pajama trousers he'd been wearing when he was rushed to hospital.

The photographs of Jackson in his pajamas went all over the word, often with no mention of Jackson's injury or the reason he was wearing them. Many journalists accused Jackson of faking the entire event in order to gain sympathy, although sympathetic is the last word you'd use to describe the media's reaction.

The incident didn't stop the media from sending Gavin Arvizo's lurid allegations around the world the following day. Some outlets even ran the boy's testimony as fact rather than conjecture. "He Said If Boys Don't Do It They Might Turn Into Rapists - Cancer Boy Gavin Tells Court of ***** Sex," wrote The Mirror.

But the boy's cross examination was another story. It went almost completely unreported. Instead of stories about Gavin Arvizo's lies and the two brothers' contradictory allegations, newspaper pages were filled with snarky opinion pieces about Jackson's pajamas, even though 'pajama day' had been days previously. Thousands of words were dedicated to whether or not Jackson wore a wig and the Sun even ran an article attacking Jackson for the accessories he pinned to his waistcoats every day. It seemed like the press would write anything to avoid discussing the boy's cross examination, which severely undermined the prosecution's case.

This habit of reporting lurid allegations but ignoring the cross examination which discredited them became a distinct trend throughout Jackson's trial. In an April 2005 interview with Matt Drudge, Fox columnist Roger Friedman explained, "What's not reported is that the cross examination of these witnesses is usually fatal to them." He added that whenever anybody said anything salacious or dramatic about Jackson, the media 'went running outside to report on it' and missed the subsequent cross examination.

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Drudge agreed, adding, "You're not hearing how witness after witness is disintegrating on the stand. There is not one witness, at least lately, that hasn't admitted to perjuring themselves in previous proceedings either in this case or in some other case."

This alarming trend of ignoring cross examination was perhaps most apparent in the media's coverage of Kiki Fournier's testimony. Under direct examination by the prosecution, Fournier - a Neverland housekeeper - testified that when at Neverland children often became unruly and she had sometimes seen children so hyperactive that they could, feasibly, have been intoxicated. The media scurried outside to report this apparent bombshell and missed one of the most significant pieces of testimony in the entire trial.

Under cross examination by Thomas Mesereau, Fournier said that during the Arvizo family's final weeks at Neverland - the period during which the molestation supposedly happened - the two boys' guest room had been constantly messy, leading her to believe they'd been sleeping in their own quarters all along - not Michael Jackson's bedroom.

She also testified that Star Arvizo had once pulled a knife on her in the kitchen, explaining that she did not feel it had been intended as a joke and that she thought he'd been 'trying to assert some sort of authority'.
In a devastating blow to the prosecution's increasingly hilarious conspiracy charge, Fournier laughed at the idea that anybody could be held prisoner at Neverland Ranch, telling the jurors that there was no high fence around the property and the family could have walked out at any time 'with ease'.

When Gavin and Star's mother Janet Arvizo took the stand Tom Sneddon was seen with his head in his hands. She claimed that a videotape of herself and her children praising Jackson had been scripted word for word by a German man who barely spoke English. In outtakes she was seen singing Jackson's praises then looking embarrassed and asking if she was being recorded. She said that had been scripted too.

She claimed she'd been held hostage at Neverland even though log books and receipts showed that she'd left the ranch and returned on three occasions during the period of 'captivity'. It became apparent that she was currently under investigation for welfare fraud and had also been falsely obtaining money on the back of her son's illness, holding benefits to pay for his cancer treatment when he was already covered by insurance.

Even the most ardent prosecution supporters had to admit that Janet Arvizo was a disastrous witness for the state. Except Diane Dimond, who in March 2005 seemed to use Janet Arvizo's welfare fraud (she was convicted in the wake of Jackson's trial) as roundabout proof of Jackson's guilt, signing off a New York Post article with the gob smacking line, "Pedophiles don't target kids with Ozzie and Harriet parents."

Watching their case crumble before their eyes, the prosecution applied to the judge for permission to admit evidence of 'prior bad acts'. Permission was granted. Prosecutors told the jury they would hear evidence of five former victims. But those five prior cases turned out to be even more laughable than the Arvizos' claims.

A parade of disgruntled security guards and housekeepers took the stand to testify that they had witnessed molestation, much of it carried out on three boys; Wade Robson, Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin. But those three boys were the defense's first three witnesses, each of them testifying that Jackson had never touched them and they resented the implication.

Moreover, it was revealed that each of these former employees had been fired by Jackson for stealing from his property or had lost a wrongful termination suit and wound up owing Jackson huge amounts of money. They'd also neglected to tell the police when they supposedly witnessed this molestation, even when questioned in connection with Jordy Chandler's 1993 allegations, but subsequently tried to sell stories to the press - sometimes successfully. The more money on the table, the more salacious the allegations became.

Roger Friedman complained in an interview with Matt Drudge that the media was ignoring the cross examination of the 'prior bad acts' witnesses, resulting in skewed reporting. He said, "When Thursday started, that first hour was with this guy Ralph Chacon who had worked at the Ranch as a security guard. He told the most outrageous story. It was so graphic. And of course everybody went running outside to report on it. But there were ten minutes right before the first break on Thursday when Tom Mesereau got up and cross examined this guy and obliterated him."

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The fourth 'victim', Jason Francia, took the stand and claimed that when he was a child, Jackson had molested him on three separate occasions. Pushed for details of the 'molestation', he said Jackson had tickled him three times outside his clothes and he'd needed years of therapy to get over it. The jury was seen rolling their eyes but reporters including Dan Abrams heralded him as 'compelling', predicting that he could be the witness who put Jackson behind bars.

The media repeatedly claimed that Francia's allegations had been made in 1990, leading audiences to believe that the Jordy Chandler allegations were predated. In actuality, although Jason Francia claimed that the acts of molestation occurred in 1990, he didn't report them until after the media storm over Chandler's claims, at which point his mother, Neverland maid Blanca Francia, promptly extracted $20,000 from Hard Copyfor an interview with Diane Dimond and another $2.4million in a settlement from Jackson.

Moreover, transcripts from police interviews showed that the Francia had repeatedly changed his story and had originally insisted that he'd never been molested. Transcripts also showed that he only said he was molested after police officers repeatedly overstepped the mark during interviews. Officers repeatedly referred to Jackson as a 'molester'. On one occasion they told the boy that Jackson was molesting Macauley Culkin as they spoke, claiming that the only way they could rescue Culkin was if Francia told them he'd been sexually abused by the star. Transcripts also showed that Francia had previously said of the police, "They made me come up with stuff. They kept pushing. I wanted to hit them in the head."

The fifth 'victim' was Jordy Chandler, who fled the country rather than testify against his former friend. Thomas Mesereau said in a Harvard lecture later that year, "The prosecutors tried to get him to show up and he wouldn't. If he had, I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he told them it never happened and that he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say. It turned out he'd gone into court and got legal emancipation from his parents."

June Chandler, Jordy's mother, testified that she hadn't spoken to her son in 11 years. Questioned about the 1993 case, she seemed to suffer from a severe case of selective memory. At one point she claimed she couldn't remember being sued by Michael Jackson and at another she said she'd never heard of her own attorney. She also never witnessed any molestation.

When the prosecution rested, the media seemed to lose interest in the trial. The defense case was given comparatively little newspaper space and air time. The Hollywood Reporter, which had been diligently reporting on the Jackson trial, missed out two whole weeks of the defense case. The attitude seemed to be that unless the testimony was graphic and salacious - unless it made a good soundbite - it wasn't worth reporting.

The defense called numerous fantastic witnesses; boys and girls who had stayed with Jackson time and again and never witnessed any inappropriate behavior, employees who had witnessed the Arvizo boys helping themselves to alcohol in Jackson's absence and celebrities who had also been targeted for handouts by the accuser. But little of this testimony was relayed to the public. When DA Tom Sneddon referred to black comic Chris Tucker as 'boy' during his cross examination, the media didn't bat an eyelid.

When both sides rested jurors were told that if they found reasonable doubt, they had to acquit. Anybody who had been paying attention to proceedings could see that the doubt was so far beyond reasonable it wasn't even funny. Almost every single prosecution witness either perjured themselves or wound up helping the defense. There wasn't a shred of evidence connecting Jackson to any crime and there wasn't a single credible witness connecting him to a crime either.

But that didn't stop journalists and pundits from predicting guilty verdicts, CNN's Nancy Grace leading the way. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who had once represented the Chandler family, stated with certainty on CNN, "He's going to be convicted." Ex-prosecutor Wendy Murphy told Fox News, "There is no question we will see convictions here."

The hysteria of the fans outside the courthouse was mirrored by that of the reporters who secured seats inside, who were so excitable that Judge Rodney Melville ordered them to 'restrain themselves'. Thomas Mesereau commented retrospectively that the media had been "almost salivating about having [Jackson] hauled off to jail."

When the jury delivered 14 'not guilty' verdicts, the media was 'humiliated', Mesereau said in a subsequent interview. Media analyst Tim Rutten later commented, "So what happened when Jackson was acquitted on all counts? Red faces? Second thoughts? A little soul-searching, perhaps? Maybe one expression of regret for the rush to judgment? Naaawww. The reaction, instead, was rage liberally laced with contempt and the odd puzzled expression. Its targets were the jurors... Hell hath no fury like a cable anchor held up for scorn."

In a post-verdict news conference Sneddon continued to refer to Gavin Arvizo as a 'victim' and said he suspected that the 'celebrity factor' had impeded the jury's judgment - a line many media pundits swiftly appropriated as they set about undermining the jurors and their verdicts.

Within minutes of the announcement, Nancy Grace appeared on CourtTV to allege that jurors had been seduced by Jackson's fame and bizarrely claim that the prosecution's only weak link had been Janet Arvizo.
"I'm having a crow sandwich right now," she said. "It doesn't taste very good. But you know what? I'm also not surprised. I thought that celebrity is such a big factor. When you think you know somebody, when you have watched their concerts, listened to their records, read the lyrics, believed they were coming from somebody's heart... Jackson is very charismatic, although he never took the stand. That has an effect on this jury.

"I'm not gonna throw a stone at the mom, although I think she was the weak link in the state's case, but the reality is I'm not surprised. I thought that the jury would vote in favor of the similar transaction witnesses. Apparently the defense overwhelmed them with the cross-examining of the mother. I think it boils down to that, plain and simple."

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Grace later stated that Jackson was 'not guilty by reason of celebrity' and was seen attempting to hound jury foreman Paul Rodriguez into saying he believed Jackson had molested children. One of Grace's guests, psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall, leveled personal attacks towards one female juror, saying, "This is a woman who has no life."

Over on Fox News, Wendy Murphy branded Jackson 'the Teflon molester' and said that the jurors needed IQ tests. She later added, "I really think it's the celebrity factor, not the evidence. I don't think the jurors even understand how influenced they were by who Michael Jackson is... They basically put targets on the backs of all, especially highly vulnerable, kids that will now come into Michael Jackson's life."

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that he thought the 'prior bad acts' testimony had been 'effective evidence', even though various boys at the heart of that testimony had taken the stand as defense witnesses and denied ever being molested. He also claimed that the defense had won because "they could tell a story, and juries, you know, always understand stories rather than sort of individual facts."

Only Robert Shapiro was dignified in the face of the verdicts, telling viewers that they should accept the jurors' decision because the jurors were from "a very conservative part of California and if they had no doubt, none of us should have any doubt."

The following day on Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer upheld the notion that the verdict had been influenced by Jackson's celebrity status. "Are you sure?" she pleaded. "Are you sure that this gigantically renowned guy walking into the room had no influence at all?"

The Washington Post commented, "An acquittal doesn't clear his name, it only muddies the water." Both the New York Post and the New York Daily News ran with the snide headline 'Boy, Oh, Boy!'

In her final New York Post article about the trial, Diane Dimond bemoaned the not guilty verdict, saying that it left Michael Jackson untouchable. She wrote, "He walked out of court a free man, not guilty on all counts. But Michael Jackson is so much more than free. He now has carte blanche to live his life any way he wants, with whomever he wants, because who would ever try to prosecute Michael Jackson now?"

In Britain's Sun newspaper, celebrity rent-a-gob and talking head extraordinaire Jane Moore penned an article titled 'If the jury agree Janet Arvizo is a bad mum (and she IS)... How did they let Jackson off?' It began: "Michael Jackson is innocent. Justice has been done. Or so the loony tunes gathered outside the courthouse would have us believe." She went on to question the jurors' mental capacity and dismiss the American legal system as 'half-baked'. "Nothing and no one truly emerges as a winner from this sorry mess," she finished, "least of all what they laughably call American 'justice'."

Sun contributor Ally Ross dismissed Jackson's fans as 'sad, solitary dick-wits'. AnotherSun article, penned by daytime TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, titled 'Don't forget the kids still at risk... *****'s own', overtly labeled Jackson a guilty man. Kelly - who never attended Jackson's trial - bemoaned the fact that Jackson 'got away with it', complaining that "instead of languishing in jail, Jackson is now back home in Neverland." Jackson, she concluded, was "a sad, sick loser who uses his fame and money to dazzle the parents of children he takes a shine to."

After the initial outrage, the Michael Jackson story slipped out of the headlines. There was little analysis of the not guilty verdicts and how they were reached. An acquittal was considered less profitable than a conviction.
Indeed, Thomas Mesereau said in later years that if Jackson had been convicted it would have created a 'cottage industry' for the media, generating a story a day for years to come. Long-running sagas like custody of Jackson's children, control of his financial empire, other 'victims' filing civil suits and the long-winded appeals process would have generated thousands of stories each for months, years, perhaps even decades.

Jackson's imprisonment would have created a never ending supply of gratuitous headlines; Who is visiting? Who isn't? Is he in solitary confinement? If not, who are his cellmates? What about his prison wardens? Does he have a prison pen-pal girlfriend? Can we fly a helicopter over the prison yard and film him exercising? The possibilities were endless. A bidding war was raging over who would get the first leaked images of Jackson in his cell before the jury even began its deliberations.

A not guilty verdict was not quite so lucrative. In an interview with Newsweek, CNN boss Jonathan Klein recalled watching the not guilty verdicts come in and then telling his deputies, "We have a less interesting story now." The Hollywood Reporter noted that hastily assembled TV specials about Jackson's acquittal performed badly and were beaten in the ratings by a re-run of Nanny 911.

The story was over. There were no apologies and no retractions. There was no scrutiny - no inquiries or investigations. Nobody was held to account for what was done to Michael Jackson. The media was content to let people go on believing their heavily skewed and borderline fictitious account of the trial. That was that.
When Michael Jackson died the media went into overdrive again. What drugs had killed him? How long had he been using them? Who had prescribed them? What else was in his system? How much did he weigh?
But there was one question nobody seemed to want to ask: Why?

Why was Michael Jackson so stressed and so paranoid that he couldn't even get a decent night's sleep unless somebody stuck a tube full of anesthetic into his arm? I think the answer can be found in the results of various polls conducted in the wake of Michael Jackson's trial.

A poll conducted by Gallup in the hours after the verdict showed that 54% of White Americans and 48% of the overall population disagreed with the jury's decision of 'not guilty'. The poll also found that 62% of people felt Jackson's celebrity status was instrumental in the verdicts. 34% said they were 'saddened' by the verdict and 24% said they were 'outraged'. In a Fox News poll 37% of voters said the verdict was 'wrong' while an additional 25% said 'celebrities buy justice'. A poll by People Weekly found that a staggering 88% of readers disagreed with the jury's decision.

The media did a number on its audience and it did a number on Jackson. After battling his way through an exhausting and horrifying trial, riddled with hideous accusations and character assassinations, Michael Jackson should have felt vindicated when the jury delivered 14 unanimous not guilty verdicts. But the media's irresponsible coverage of the trial made it impossible for Jackson to ever feel truly vindicated. The legal system may have declared him innocent but the public, on the whole, still thought otherwise. Allegations which were disproven in court went unchallenged in the press. Shaky testimony was presented as fact. The defense's case was all but ignored.

When asked about those who doubted the verdicts, the jury replied, "They didn't see what we saw."
They're right. We didn't. But we should have done. And those who refused to tell us remain in their jobs unchecked, unpunished and free to do exactly the same thing to anybody they desire.
Now that's what I call injustice.

Article is used with permission of the author, Charles Thomson
 
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