Day Two of Media Excess: Quincy, M.E., Tear-Jerker Retrospectives, Repurposed Stale Interviews, and Real News Blockade

It’s Day Two and the nonsense continues.  The absolute wall-to-wall obsession with the passing of Michael Jackson on cable news has effectively created a “real news blackout.”  It is the black hole of journalism, consuming all available time and space.  It’s “B Roll” screen burn-in, with the same music video clips of the past four decades run over and over and over and over and over again.

I started my day this morning with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which amuses and irritates me out of bed every morning.  The nice video buffer I start before I actually wake up lets me blow past the commercials and uninteresting segments (like the endless hard sell of Scarborough’s new book which has also now leaked into other MSNBC and NBC News programming).  This morning was near wall-to-wall handwringing over Jacko, with the seemingly permanent satellite feed to the Vanity Fair reporter who turned up at least 10 times in the last 24 hours.  At least she called out his “boy problem.”

Scarborough has been getting testy lately, often filibustering with his concern trolling over national health care reform (even with Chris Matthews, who filibusters even when he asks his own questions.)  Both of them were getting too irritating to listen to first thing in the morning, but after this morning’s endless Jacko coverage, I take it back.

Lots of stations are camped outside of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, typically in front of the slightly disturbing electronic message sign showing time, temperature, and quotations from famous writers inferring folks better fix their problems with loved ones before it’s too late.  Of course, there is absolutely nothing to report, but there they stand, hoping to catch a glimpse of something… anything worth reporting.  If the medical examiner finds the doctor injected Jackson with a powerful pain killer, then we can expect a complaint with the Board of Medical Quality Assurance, and some fist pounding testimony before Congress about the dangers of bad medicine (I know my Quincy episodes!)

Today’s shameful moments: Ed Schultz opened his radio show this afternoon giving some behind the scenes info over at MSNBC.  Producers there were the ones who decided to go “wall to wall” with Jacko “news” and asked Schultz if he’d like to waste spend his hour talking about what Jackson accomplished.  Schultz ultimately took a pass.  This morning, cable news producers were scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for guests.  I half-expected a live shot with the cat living next door to the Jackson rental estate.  What we got was nearly as bad.  One channel ran a live phone interview with a broken up woman all upset over the shocking news, because she knew the family and how they must be feeling.  When the on-air talent finally asked when the last time she talked with Jackson or the family, the answer was something like 1982.  The interview promptly wrapped up.

CNN is having a group hug today with the whole wide world.  Tweets, e-mails, teary Europeans and Asians, it’s all there.

I have to ask myself if it’s just me, or if anyone else out there spent about 10 minutes pondering the surprising development of Jackson’s passing, but then moved on with their lives.

All weekend long, there will be more of the same, with teary retrospectives and tributes, reruns of old music videos, stale repurposed interviews that ran years ago (will anyone have the courage to run Martin Bashir’s I wonder?)

Iran could be a lake of fire right now, and the cable news networks already short staffed over the weekend would never know.  I’ll bet MSNBC still finds time to run those “Lockup” shows anyway.  Had Jackson been found guilty during his 2005 trial, they could have had the best of both worlds.