Is it still ok to listen to Michael Jackson?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

Michael Jackson is perhaps the biggest pop star there’s ever been. He’s still thought of as a legend, despite years of allegations regarding his relationships with young boys. Jackson was found not guilty at a court case in 2005, but now one of the men who testified in Jackson’s defence in that case has appeared in a documentary to say, alongside another man, that the singer did regularly sexually abuse him. Michael Jackson’s family has rejected the claims and say there is "not one piece of evidence" to back up the allegations. But at a time when we tend to more easily believe victims, might Michael Jackson’s music now be off-limits? “Leaving Neverland” is on Channel 4 next week, and its director Dan Reed talks to us, alongside the BBC’s Peter Bowes, and Scott Bryan from the Must Watch podcast. Producers: Harriet Noble, Duncan Barber and Philly Beaumont Mixed by Weidong Lin Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.6	Hello, I'm Matthew Price and this is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.7	Each weekday we ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.5	Today is it's still okay to listen to Michael Jackson.
0:27.0	I was actually at Michael Jackson's funeral and I remember standing up at the back of this
0:39.5	20,000-seater arena called the Stapels Center in Los Angeles. I was there with other
0:45.6	journalists. Matthew Price who's at the center. Having been inside I can tell you
0:52.1	that at times it was intensely moving certainly for the
0:55.4	fans there and indeed the friends and family of Michael Jackson this was a fitting
1:00.1	memorial service. We were surrounded by fans who had hewed up for days to try and get a ticket to this massive global event.
1:09.0	And I remember looking down across this arena, across the sea of people at this stage where
1:16.0	Michael Jackson's coffin was on the stage surrounded by flowers and right in front of that
1:22.0	coffin in the front row was his family, his children, his parents, his siblings.
1:27.0	And there was this really strange mixture.
1:30.0	On the one hand it felt like this intimate church funeral for the family and for his
1:38.3	immediate friends his closest friends and at the same time it was this huge global event. It was like the
1:45.4	final Michael Jackson concert. It was just astonishing. And at that time you
1:50.0	you couldn't get away from Michael Jackson's music. Radio and TV were playing it constantly.
1:55.1	It was in all of our news reports. And we as journalists were talking about the legend, the King of Pop.
2:01.7	We were talking a lot less about the rumors of what Michael Jackson had done to
2:06.4	children, his alleged sexual relationships with them.
2:10.9	The word paedophile just wasn't being used.
	...

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