The Mirror, the People, and the settlement that never was...

It's a funny thing. Ever since the high-profile Michael Jackson death trial started going pear-shaped for promoter AEG Live, a lot of newspapers which carry prominent and lucrative advertising for its events have become more intent on smearing Michael Jackson than ever.

Leading the way has been The Mirror in the UK. A few weeks ago, contemporaneous emails presented at trial showed that AEG boss Randy Phillips had 'slapped' Michael Jackson because he was scared about attending a press conference. Slapped him and screamed at him 'so loud the walls shook'.

The shocking revelation was widely ignored by the press. Several days after the evidence was heard in open court, only one outlet had summoned the courage to publish it. AP did not include the testimony in its daily missive from the courtroom. The wire's reporter claimed on twitter he had been out of the courtroom sending emails when the testimony occurred.

It was only when fans started making noise about the 'cover-up' on sites like Twitter that other media companies grudgingly published the comments. AEG-sponsored newspapers like the Mirror, though, bizarrely tried to paint Michael Jackson as the bad guy. According to the first line of the Mirror's story, Jackson 'needed to be slapped'. Interestingly, the Mirror was a lot faster to publish a story last year accusing Janet Jackson of slapping a minor. A story which turned out to be a lie.

This weekend - days after Jackson's son took the stand and testified that he saw Phillips in his home while his father was not there, behaving 'aggressively' towards Jackson's doctor - the Mirror's Sunday edition, called the People, is at it again. It has published a highly misleading story about some 'FBI files' which allegedly show Michael Jackson was witnessed molesting children by multiple Neverland employees. The 'FBI files' also detail a supposed settlement with a young accuser in 1992 - before the Jordy Chandler case.

In reality, the story is a nonsense; a birds nest of mangled and misstated accusations which are neither 'new' nor 'exclusive', despite the People's repeated claims that they are. In fact, the documents are not 'FBI files' at all. This is a flat-out lie. Moreover, the claims have all been in the public domain for a very long time, some having been discredited two decades ago.

Of course, most readers won't bother to fact-check the story. Why would they? The newspaper is supposed to do that before publishing it. Sadly, it seems other media outlets can't be bothered either. Britain's Mail newspaper has already rehashed the story, evidently making no attempt to investigate its veracity before doing so.

I could go into a whole lot of detail about the claims made by the People - and the various lazy journalists who will copy and paste its story hundreds, or perhaps thousands of times onto their own websites and into their own newspapers in the coming days. But what is the point? The info is already in the public domain.

Those who hate Jackson will adopt the People's story as evidence for their case. Those with an interest in hearing both sides of Jackson's case will already know that these claims were debunked a long time ago. Nobody else will even bother to research the story. The People's readers buy the newspaper because they like and trust it. They, as intended, will believe this story and will not question it.

Briefly, however, for the record:

1) The 'FBI files' are not FBI files. They are transcripts of interviews compiled by a tabloid journalist who paid his sources - including one who, it seems, might not have actually existed.They were acquired by a PI who worked for Jackson's defence team. A decade later, he was prosecuted for tapping phones. The FBI seized all of his files, of which these tabloid interviews formed a miniscule part. The documents are therefore in the possession of the FBI - but they are not FBI files. If I order a Pizza Hut margherita to my home, that doesn't make it a 'Charles Thomson pizza'.

2) The allegations of Jackson being caught by multiple employees do not, as the People infers, come from a host of different documents. They all come from one document - a transcript of an interview with a couple called the LeMarques, who worked at Neverland in the late 80s and early 90s. The People intentionally does not state that all of these uncorroborated accusations come from just one of the documents, instead purposely misleading readers and suggesting that they're taken from a cache of evidence.

The LeMarques never contacted police about the abuse they claimed to have witnessed, instead opting to negotiate deals with tabloid newspapers - including the Mirror. Their claims were investigated by cops probing Jackson, who found the couple had agreed to add increasingly graphic details to their interviews for more and more money. Investigators concluded in the 90s that the pair had no credibility and possessed no evidence of any genuine abuse. They were called on out of desperation to testify in Jackson's 2005 trial after prosecutors watched their case begin to disintegrate, but were destroyed under cross-examination. Jurors rejected their testimony and acquitted Jackson, unanimously.

3) The supposed 'settlement' in 1992 was detailed to a tabloid reporter, for money, by a serial tipster called Taylea Shea. She never showed the reporter a document - she simply 'read it out' over the phone. A police investigation into the claim found that the boy named in the settlement did not exist, there was no record of any settlement ever being paid, and Taylea Shea disappeared into thin air. It became apparent she had used several aliases and nobody knew who she really was. She was never heard of again.

This leaves one element of the People's story standing; that Jackson 'allegedly' - what a convenient little word that is - paid $35million to two-dozen young accusers. The newspaper presents no evidence to corroborate this claim. Just a note in the tabloid reporter's documents, which the People intentionally misrepresents as an 'FBI file'.

Contrary to the People's claim, investigators knew about and investigated these files as part of their probe into Jackson in 2003/4, in which they were assisted by the FBI. Despite all of their resources, neither the Californian police nor the FBI was ever able to locate any evidence that any child besides Jordan Chandler or Jason Francia ever received a settlement.

Exposing the Lies of Conspiracy Bloggers

As I mentioned in a blog entry earlier today, on Friday evening I was invited onto Blog Talk Radio to be interviewed about my reporting on Kelvin MacKenzie's recent diatribe against Michael Jackson's children on British TV.

During the half-hour interview a number of other subjects were covered, including the release of the new Michael Jackson album and the campaign waged against me this summer by conspiracy bloggers. The latter discussion appears to have provoked the ire of one such conspiracy blogger, whose latest entry is a frenzied rant about my appearance on the broadcast.

During the last five months or so I have become accustomed to seeing harebrained blog entries written about me and have mostly managed to abstain from responding to them, but this one caught my attention because the blogger in question - Bonnie Cox - told some pretty sizable porkies, including a couple about the content of her own blogs.

During my interview on Blog Talk Radio I discussed two of the accusations that Bonnie had made about me in the past few months; namely that I was involved in a plot with John Branca and that somebody had hired me to attack AEG.

Bizarrely, Cox took to her blog this weekend to deny ever making either of those accusations, apparently forgetting that the original accusations were still on her blog for anybody and everybody to read.

Here's Cox in her latest blog entry, denying that she ever accused me of being involved in a plot with John Branca:

And yet here she is the previous month, blatantly accusing me of being involved in a 'buddy-buddy three-some' with John Branca and Randy Taraborrelli, 'getting along on MJ's wallet, name, blood, sweat and tears':



Back-pedal, or amnesia? You be the judge.

Similarly, here's Bonnie in her latest entry claiming that she didn't accuse me of being hired to attack AEG:



No Bonnie, it wasn't Muzik, it was you. Look:



Jog any memories?

During my discussion with the hosts about conspiracy bloggers and their methods, I mentioned how these bloggers totally dismiss any evidence which contradicts their pre-determined conclusions. I used the example of bloggers who constantly claim that I didn't write positively about Michael Jackson until after he died, even though a fifteen second visit to my website will show that I've been writing pro-Jackson articles for several years.

Did Bonnie take this opportunity to 'fess up to her deception? No. She logged straight into her blog and repeated the exact claim that I'd just debunked:


Her comment is a lie. Simple as that. The first time I was ever paid for a story about Michael Jackson was in March 2009 when I was contacted by a member of MJ's camp and specifically asked to leak information on his trip to London, in order to create hype around his impending concert announcement. Prior to that my only work on Michael Jackson was largely very sympathetic and was written pro bono, such as my 2008 interview with Aphrodite Jones about her book 'Michael Jackson Conspiracy'.

Any claim that I was paid for anything Jackson-related before March 2009 is a lie and any claim that I didn't support Jackson before he died is also a lie.

In her new blog entry, Bonnie once more utilises the exact tactic that I described in my radio interview, telling her readers a half-truth and filling in the gaps with pure fantasy. She mentions my 2007 article about the album 'Thriller 25' and claims that it is proof of a pre-existing relationship between myself and Sony:

Firstly, Bonnie is a liar. I did not interview Sony's 'marketing head honcho'. I interviewed a member of Sony's catalogue release department marketing team. On top of this outright lie, she omits important information with the specific intention of misrepresenting my interaction with Sony.

What Bonnie doesn't tell you is that I was dispatched to Sony HQ in December 2007 by a fansite. Like many journalism students, I used to write for free for fansites in order to bolster my portfolio of published work and gain vital interviewing/writing experience.

In other words - as a 19 year old journalism student I interviewed a member of Sony's catalogue release marketing team for a Michael Jackson fansite. This, according to Bonnie, proves that I am a dastardly co-conspirator in an evil Sony plot to murder Michael Jackson.

The other thing Bonnie doesn't tell you is that my review of 'Thriller 25' was negative, not positive, which totally negates any implication that I was somehow acting as an agent of the record company who put it out. I described one of the remixes on the set as sounding like 'a hobo bludgeoning a dwarf with a sack full of windchimes'. In fact, the review was so negative that Sony complained about me in writing and issued me with a lifelong ban from their catalogue release department.

The latest blog from Bonnie is, essentially, just more of the usual; another gigantic dose of paranoia with a generous sprinkling of deception. But this time she has been caught out in a series of undeniable lies. She denied writing certain comments about me when those comments were still on her blog in black and white for all to see. In doing so, she has demonstrated just how changeable and unreliable she really is.

In the past it has been pointless to respond to Bonnie's claims because there has been no way to refute them. How can you prove that you haven't done something? If you've been to the Grand Canyon and someone accuses you of lying, you can pull out a photograph. If you haven't been to the Grand Canyon and somebody claims that you have - how can you prove they're lying?

What differentiates Bonnie's latest blog from her previous offerings is that this time she's trapped herself in her own web of deceit. Here, in black and white, are Bonnie's lies for all to see. On one day she'll claim that I'm in cahoots with Branca, on another she'll deny ever saying any such thing. In one entry she'll say I've been hired to attack AEG, in another she'll claim that it wasn't her and that it must have been a different blogger.

Her reader numbers have dwindled significantly since the summer after she embarked on a number of ill-advised campaigns against everybody from make-up artist Karen Faye to a variety of innocent fans. But after this latest embarrassment, it'll be a wonder if she has any readers left at all by the end of the year.

Here's an excerpt from the Blog Talk Radio discussion that caused the controversy:

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - The Final Instalment

The conclusion of my interview with poet and author Lorette Luzajic has been uploaded. In this segment I discuss the dangers of fanaticism, what I've learnt from being attacked by conspiracy theorists, and my future plans.

Click here to read the final instalment of my exclusive interview with Lorette Luzajic.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - Part Five

The latest instalment of my interview with author Lorette Luzajic has gone online. In this segment I speak about conspiracy theorist bloggers who claim to be conducting 'investigations' but actually ignore facts which disprove their theories and perpetuate lies which have been disproven on numerous occasions.

I also speak about how these conspiracy theorists are preying on vulnerable fans, as well as discussing the overzealousness of some Michael Jackson fans and how politics and in-fighting in Jackson's fan community are having a detrimental effect on his legacy.

Click here to read Part Five of this exclusive serialised interview.

Throughout this interview I have often spoken about conspiracy theorist bloggers, using examples to illustrate how they repeat lies even after they've been repeatedly disproven, and use irrelevant facts to 'prove' absurd theories.

The response of one such blogger, Bonnie Cox, has been to publish even more hilarious fibs. In her latest blog entry she writes: "Now Charles Thomson has been recruited to cut into AEG (he’s out of hiding now, welcome back Charles) as well as Randy Taraborrelli and his trolls being sent to my facebook page."

In another perfect illustration of the very methods I have discussed in my lengthy interview with Lorette Luzajic, Cox claims with no evidence whatsoever that I have come out of 'hiding' after being hired by somebody to slander the concert promotion company AEG.

As far as I can remember, I haven't made any public comment on AEG whatsoever. Moreover, I was never 'in hiding'. Last month I conducted a highly publicised interview with the rapper Cazwell. I have also, in recent weeks, launched a YouTube page.

Cox also used her blog this week to publish some stunning anti-Semitic comments. "Using a jewish slang word in a song that calls attention to the separation of the races and his gets banned?" she wrote. "You know why? You know who's running the the Entertainment industry now, or at least who controls most of it..."

Looks like somebody's been spending too much time on illuminati conspiracy forums - and for somebody who posts so many bible verses on her blog, she doesn't seem to be doing very well on the 'love thy neighbour' front.