Jackson media frenzy faulted

For example, even before Jackson's death was announced on June 25, attorney Brian Oxman gave a CNN interview in which he said he had comforted stunned family members and charged that "people who have surrounded" the singer "have been enabling him." The network identified Oxman as a "longtime friend and spokesman" and many outlets have called him a "Jackson family lawyer."

However, Oxman's authority has since come under some dispute. He was one of the singer's attorneys during his 2005 molestation trial, but Joe Jackson, the clan's patriarch, said on Sunday that attorney L. Londell McMillan was the family's spokesperson; Sunshine was hired three days later. Oxman, who is still quoted by some outlets, told Los Angeles Times media columnist James Rainey that he is neither a family spokesman nor is he acting as a lawyer in matters relating to the Jackson death. He told Rainey, "I am a commentator and these are my comments."

The confusion over sourcing -- along with Jackson's legendarily bizarre background -- has created a hothouse for gossip and crackpot tips.

"The rumors are so rampant," Steve Tseckares, vice president at E! Studios, which runs the cable network's news programs, said Thursday. "Yesterday we heard at 6:30 that Michael Jackson had committed suicide. It seems outlandish but you have to ferret out everything in this story, because everything seems possible. What we determined was that it was just a rumor.

"But that's what is making this story different, I think -- many rumors. And with these stories being driven by the Internet now, those kinds of stories pop up and become real quickly, even if they may not be true."

Some survey the circus surrounding Jackson's death, though, and say it was ever thus. Or at least it's always been that way when the media collide with a major developing story with massive public interest.

Jack Shafer, press critic for the online magazine Slate, argues that news outlets always get facts wrong when chasing big, multifaceted breaking stories. "What's happening with the Jackson story seems to me to be deadline journalism par for the course," he said.

As Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism put it, "I can find you papers from the 1880s and 1890s that published just as much rumor and innuendo, but it was in the bulldog edition of a Hearst or Pulitzer newspaper."

But given the worldwide interest in Jackson's life and death, the singer's family may need media handlers such as Sunshine for a long time.

According to a spokesman for the Los Angeles Superior Court, an all-time record of 70 news organizations -- from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil and Mexico -- have applied for admittance to a Monday hearing on the control of his estate.

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maria.elena.fernandez @latimes.com

scott.collins@latimes.com

Staff writer Harriet Ryan contributed to this report.