ET Purposely Misleading the Public? – MJEOL Bullet #83

ET Purposely Misleading the Public? – MJEOL Bullet #83 For the past two weekday shows, television program Entertainment Tonight (ET) has been running a very old interview with a former maid of Michael Jackson’s, who claimed during that interview that the singer did very inappropriate things with her son and other children. However, ET has neglected as of yet to inform its audience that this maid, Blanca Francia, was paid $20,000 for that interview by the now defunct tabloid tv show Hard Copy. Then, Francia told the queen of tabloid Jackson “news”, Diane Dimond, that she had actually seen Jackson taking showers and Jacuzzi baths with “young boys.” However, a copy of Francia’s sworn testimony during the 1993 investigation revealed that Hard Copy did in fact pay her $20,000 for that interview. Under deposition by Jackson’s own attorney at that time, Francia actually admitted that the statements made to Hard Copy in that interview were complete lies and that she never saw Jackson taking showers or baths with anyone, let alone “young boys.” This information was detailed in an exhaustive Oct 1994 investigative article by Mary Fischer for GQ Magazine. Why then, has “Exaggeration Tonight”–as it’s become known by some of Jackson’s fans–failed to fully disclose this information? One possibility could be the show’s producers have failed to thoroughly research the situation. Another more sinister speculative reason is that the show’s producers either don’t care or may want to mislead the public on purpose regarding this situation. No doubt, shallowly researched pieces of non-news have appeared quite frequently on various news shows concerning the Jackson case. Thus, the public should be very careful that they get the full story. Whether or not ET makes a full disclosure of the facts surrounding Francia’s jury-pool-tainting interview remains to be seen. But don’t bet on it. Check out the Oct 1994 GQ Magazine article, Was Michael Jackson Framed? The Untold Story here at MJEOL. Or you can view the actual magazine scans at Steve Harvey’s website. -MJEOL