Jackson gag order 'must stay': Prosectors

Attacking the news media for pandering to a “gossip-hungry” audience, Santa Barbara County prosecutors has urged the state Supreme Court to uphold a gagging order in the Michael Jackson child molestation case.

They said the court-imposed order was important to maintain an untainted pool of potential jurors.

They claimed the Jackson case had generated enormous public interest and was a constant focus of the tabloid and mainstream media.

“What is reported as ‘fact’ becomes the nucleus of intense speculation, conjecture and discussion among commentators, particularly in the tabloid media, and the audience they appeal to,” District Attorney Thomas Sneddon and Deputy District Attorney Gerald Franklin said in a letter to the court, filed yesterday.

The prosecutors said they were submitting the letter in response to a request from news organisations to lift the gag order. The order bars anyone connected to the case from talking about it.

The Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear the case and has asked both sides to submit arguments.

Sneddon and Franklin wrote they initially sought the gag order to stop what they viewed as the “unseemly and prejudicial enthusiasm” of Jackson’s former defence lawyer for talking to television talk-show hosts such as Larry King and Geraldo Rivera.

Attorney Theodore Boutrous, who represents the news organisations, said he would respond in writing.

Sneddon and Franklin argue the gag order so far has succeeded in keeping facts that ultimately could be presented to a jury out of the public eye. That means a jury will determine Jackson’s guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented to it, their letter states.

“And that’s the way it should be,” they said.