A star slurred by the media
By Herry Yiu, Sha Tin Tsung Tsin Secondary School
Before his death, many people thought of Michael Jackson as a freak. His eccentricities had been in the media spotlight for years, painting him negatively.
That all seemed to change when he died in June this year. Now, we are learning about the other side to Jackson. We are hearing, for example, how he donated huge sums of money to charities – often anonymously. In fact, The Guinness Book of Records names Jackson as the pop star who supported the most charities, making him not just the King of Pop, but the King of Charity.
I didn’t know this when he was alive, because all I read was the negative news reported in the media. This is saddening, and I think there is an important lesson in it. We should not judge people based on their appearance or what others tell us.
Jackson is just one example. Many artists and celebrities suffer at the hands of the media. In future, let’s focus on the facts, not gossip.
Young Post 
I must agree with you.
The media had indeed been Jackson’s downfall, adding to his pressure, and partially leading to his habit of abusing drug, as suggested in news.
I only knew of all the negative comments about him when he was alive. It wasn’t until he passed away that I started listening to his songs, and realized how talented and innocent he was. I mean, the man had never learnt music in his entire life (he started his career when he was 5), but he wrote and composed every single song he sang! And that’s a lot, for your information.
I strongly recommend the movie “This Is It”. It will show how great he was.
The media has, in short, led to the death of a great man. I think we should really try to stop cases like this from happening ever again…
Thank you for your letter Herry. One way to ensure you get facts is to read reputable publications and not put too much stock in gossip. The problem is that there is a huge appetite for titillating information about stars.
A huge industry has sprung up around bringing you the latest photo of some drunken celeb or information about Twilight stars. Every time you buy a celeb gossip publication you are supporting that industry.
But this also points to a far wider problem as far as general news is concerned. It seems even the respectable publications believe things are only newsworthy when they are wrong, deadly or miserable. Just looking through the news stories each day can be a depressing venture. The ‘puppy saved from well’ stories are very far apart.
But there is a positive message that can be taken from this – bad things are ‘news’. In other words they are not commonplace. They are out of the ordinary. Conversely we can say good things are usual, and therefore, not news.
Susan, Editor