No Rock And Roll Fun

JOURNALISM BESMIRCHED: Harry Belafonte has condemned the media's treatment of Michael Jackson, claiming, in a somewhat over-the-top fashion that "no single individual has had influence in the world" like Jackson, which may come as something of a shock to Jesus, Churchill, Lenin, Stalin, George W Bush and... you get the point.

It's interesting that Belafonte is being presented as speaking out in support of Jackson for two reasons - first, because he hasn't, he's just taking a "lets wait and see what the courts tell us" stance; second, to support Jackson is a very difficult thing to do, given that you don't need to have the charges of child molestation to find very strong grounds to condemn him - remember the whole man who has been accused of kiddie fiddling in the past and was happy to pay off the accuser rather than prove his innocence in court going on television and happily announcing he shares his bedroom with young boys when their parents aren't around bit, Harry?

Where we do agree with Harry is that journalism is in a bit of a poor state - although most of the reports make room to mention in passing he's in Nairobi at the moment, we don't think any of the American domestic media managed to find even a line's worth of space for Belafonte's comments on poverty in Kenya.