Tomorrow is the Michael Jackson World-wide Memorial Service, and yes, San Diego 6 will be covering the event. One of our fine young reporters, Elex Michaelson, who is also our Sat/Sun 7-9AM co-anchor went up today, along with a photographer, to report to local angle on this unique event.
Elex will be giving us live reports and observations and we will live-streaming the entire event on sandiego6.com. Elex (and Jenny Hamel) did the same thing during President Obama's inauguration and together gave San Diego the only local reporters “on the ground” for this event…not just on-air, but through live streaming and facebook and myspace.
These Michael Jackson updates will start in our 5A-9AM San Diego 6 in the Morning broadcast. The first live remote coming to our viewers around 530AM and will continue each 30 minutes throughout the morning. Elex will also be in our 10pm news and 11@11, and will be available on Twitter and Facebook and myspace.
With Los Angeles being so close to San Diego, and since fans from San Diego were among those randomly picked for the memorial service, we felt that it would be a good idea to have a local slant on what is likely the biggest world-wide celebrity interest event since the funeral of Princess Diana.
Many people have commented to us asking why the news services have so much Michael Jackson coverage? What is wrong with the media to spend so much time on this man? Why do you care about all of this? The simple answer is, because so many of our viewers care and would like to know what is happening.
Actually, I don’t think San Diego 6 has gone overboard on the coverage…unlike most of the other stations in San Diego, we didn’t break into our programming during the self-serving press conference by Michael’s father, Joe Jackson and Al Sharpton to talk about a future service and the forming of a record label to make money off the death of Michael Jackson. We have kept our reporting on whatever updated facts there have been to the conditions of Michael Jackson’s death.
However, Michael Jackson was a part of the fabric of culture that many, many people of all nations and language shared together. His descent into freakishness and bizarre behavior became the fodder that many found either fascinating or we drawn to the information like people watching a car-wreck, not being able to stop themselves. Whatever the reason; his music, his fame, his strange life-style, his fantastic wealth, his even more fantastic spending habits, his altruism, his adopted children, the accusations of abuse…all were reasons people are interested in Michael Jackson, and the media and news has reflected that interest.
I would recommend you watch our own Dr. Keith Kanner, from Your Family Matters, who discussed this very subject today on San Diego 6 in his usual insightful and articulate manner: “Michael Jackson, Why Legends leave Impressions” I have included the link:
http://blogs.sandiego6.com/blogs/post.aspx?App=your_family_matters&y=2009&m=07&d=03&PostID=4196391
I would hope that as we give you some new insights on this world-wide event, we will not forget the real news and real heroes of this country. I am refering to precious lives of those men and women who continue to place their lives in “harm’s way” to protect our ability to have the freedom to choose to watch this type of activity.
Today in Afghanistan, seven more American marines lost their lives and another marine was announced as kidnapped by the Taliban. These are the true heroes who we should recognize. They leave their families behind and go out to protect each of us. The fact is, while these latest casualties will be in our news tonight at 10pm, and these fatalities have already been mentioned on other news services…it will simply be a "mention" compared to the massive amount of coverage on Michael Jackson.
Frankly, that is a sad commentary on what is wrong with the values that exist not just in California, and in America, but in the world today.
