NBC’s Dateline Continues to Pound Jackson – showBIZdata

NBC’S DATELINE CONTINUES TO POUND JACKSON Friday, September 3 2004 ——————————————————————————– NBC Dateline reporter Josh Mankiewicz, who has sometimes appeared to TV critics as a mouthpiece for the prosecution in the Michael Jackson case, is expected to report on the magazine program tonight (Friday) that Jackson paid $2 million to the son of a Neverland Ranch employee in 1990 as hush money to prevent him from going public with a charge of child molestation. Mankiewicz, who fronted another Jackson report on Dateline last year entitled “Michael Jackson: Unmasked,” does not identify the source of his information. However, he does interview retired Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas, who told Jackson (sic) that he heard about the boy when he was investigating the 1993 allegation against Jackson, and added: “We always believed there were eight to 10 other children out there.” Thomas has been hired by Dateline as a paid analyst during the current legal proceedings against Jackson. The singer and his attorneys are blocked from responding to the latest allegations because of a gag order. Source: http://www.showbizdata.com/contacts/picknews.cfm?id=36511