Real Journalism

Factual journalism. Extremely well-researched, written and spoken. This book is written very professionally in a reporter style. It does not shy away from a difficult and controversial topic and Diane Diamond, a mainstay of 80s Hard Copy, has applaudable courage to report events and fact-check them in the face of adversity and at personal risk to herself. Disgusting though it is, Jackson fans will attack the book, but it is one of the truest books I've read on the first-hand accounts, testimony and evidence presented in court and how things happened and were stated blow by blow. This is what a real journalist should be.

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must read

absolutely fantastic. really good read. fantastic narrative and didn't want it to end . brilliant

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Great summary

This is basically a factual summary of accounts and trails MJ went through regarding peadophilia. Even latoya Jackson admitted she was suspicious of MJ, there's plenty of YouTube videos of her interviews from back in the day

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Awful narration quote unquote

Could have been a good listen but the constant ‘quote end quote quote unquote’ is distracting and annoying. Quote

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No balance! Tabloid speculation in book form.

Where do I start!? Di Dimond just drags up the same old stuff tabloids have been writing for years to sell papers and make cash off Michael Jackson.

I didn't pay to read on audible as I got a free credit and thought I'd give it a listen. I'm an MJ fan and I've always been open to hearing both sides of the argument. I'm the sort of person Diane ridicules and mocks from the opening chapter, for not being willing to see another side of MJ. She's quite wrong about a very large proportion of his fans, who as parents themselves have been very prepared to consider the question "Is there a dark side to Michael?". The fans have spent hours and hours viewing footage, reading documents, scrutinising everything! This makes it easy for us to add balance to the salacious headlines. Here's another slant on just a few of the points she makes in the first few chapters to prove how easy it is:

- the ex employees Diane claims saw MJ being inappropriate have also been convicted of stealing from him and were dismissed from his employment. Disgruntled ex employees maybe? These ex employees have also accepted six figures from tabloids to say they saw inappropriate behaviour.
-Diane claims children have been molested e.g. Macaulay Culkin, Emanuel Lewis and Brett Barnes. Yet to this day, they say nothing ever happened?
-She says MJ had Jordy on his lap at the World Music Awards and was bouncing him up and down for sexual gratification. There was a lady sat in the seat next to Michael with a little girl on her lap...is she a paedo now too? There were no available seats for the children so they all shared seats with the adults. What you are saying is...in front of cameras and hundreds of eyes on him, including the prince of monaco, MJ was openly rubbing up against Jordy? Really?!
-Diane suggests that because Michael was angry at the police photographing his intimate areas he must be guilty. Maybe he was just really distressed. I know I would be!

Whatever Michael did or didn't do, Diane Dimond always twists it towards her own conclusions of guilt. Instead of adding some reasonable balance to things, she chooses to draw twisted conclusions to even the most innocent of scenarios and then mocks fans for being too closed minded! She needs to take a hard look at herself. Someone once told me "people see in others what they see in themselves". Never a truer word spoken Diane!

The book is trashy and Di Dimond is just another journo trying to make a quick buck off a dead man. Sad.

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12 people found this helpful

Quote unquote

Another annoying quote unquote book, had to turn off, why do they feel the need?

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1 person found this helpful

Vindictive nasty cash in

Don’t bother with this vile cash in that has no regard for truth and in fact deliberately makes false accusations that the author knows to be untrue

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One sided

Diane Dimond has been trying to make money off of Michael Jackson for years she is obsessed with him. There is no balance in this book, Diane also twists things this book is full of assumptions and not facts. The love letters was spoken about on Larry King and he asked her if she had actually seen the love letters and she said no. I could make many other points but I would be here all day writing.. Do your own research if you are interested in Michael Jackson there is so much more that points towards his innocence. If you look at actual facts you can see it's obvious that it's highly unlikely that he ever did anything wrong. He was the victim. Square one is an excellent Documentary with actual facts in it.

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So annoying

This book would have been really good had the narrator hadn’t said literally every sentence ‘quote’ ….’end quote’. Really annoying.

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3 people found this helpful

Diamond is a rag's best friend.

This book is questionable but here's something factual .
'Hard Copy is an American tabloid television show that ran in syndication from 1989 to 1999.'

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