Joe Jackson

ABC News is being accused of checkbook journalism after landing the first sit-down interview with Joe Jackson following the recent death of his pop superstar son, Michael. Segments of a 45-minute interview with the Jackson family patriarch have already aired on ABC's "Nightline" and "Good Morning America," but the bulk of the interview will air tonight on the network as part of its summer series "Primetime Family Secrets." Mediabistro.

Michael Jackson was scheduled to undergo a second physical by an insurance company doctor at the time of his death, according to the terms of the policy purchased by the promoter of his planned comeback concerts in London.

In the lowest moment of Michael Jackson's life -- his 2005 criminal trial -- his mother, Katherine, was his greatest supporter. In breaks between testimony of witnesses accusing the pop star of molesting young boys, she and her son would repair to a private room in the courthouse with his legal team and she would murmur comforting words to him. "She would tell him that the truth would prevail, that God would help him. She just kept him strong," defense lawyer Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. recalled.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives are trying to identify and interview "multiple doctors" who treated or prescribed medication to Michael Jackson going back years, a law enforcement source told The Times. Until now, much of the attention surrounding the pop icon's death has focused on Dr.

Michael Jackson's father wants the late singer's estate to help him cover living expenses that exceed $20,000 a month, according to court papers filed Friday. The estate is already paying Jackson's mother a monthly allowance of $26,000 and an attorney for Joe Jackson, 81, wrote in the Los Angeles County Superior Court filing that the family patriarch was entitled to the "same manner" of support. In the papers, his lawyer wrote that Michael Jackson had footed his father's bills for decades.

The cost of Michael Jackson's private funeral topped $1 million, with more than half that amount going to buy a crypt in a celebrity-studded Glendale mausoleum and $35,000 spent on clothes for the singer, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. Jackson, who died in June, was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in September in a nighttime ceremony arranged by his family and paid for by his estate. The probate judge who signed off on those expenses made public the funeral costs at a hearing in which he also appointed two longtime Jackson associates, entertainment attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, as executors of his estate.

Sunday's BET Awards, hastily transformed into a tribute to Michael Jackson three days after his death, could be the highest-rated broadcast in the 27-year history of the black-oriented cable network. Yet the show provoked scathing reaction from bloggers and viewers who found some elements, including host Jamie Foxx's constant promotion of his album and upcoming tour, distasteful and offensive. The live broadcast drew about 10.2 million viewers, a 61% increase over its audience last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Nearly two months have passed since Michael Jackson's death on June 25. But now, after weeks of wild rumors about the state of his remains and Jackson family in-fighting about where to bury the body, the singer is finally going to be laid to rest, his father said. In interviews with the New York Daily News and People magazine published Monday, Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, said the singer would be buried in a private ceremony at Los Angeles' Forest Lawn Cemetery. He said the burial date was set for Aug. 29 -- what would have been the superstar's 51st birthday.

Federal marshals seized a grand piano and an aged Rolls-Royce Thursday from the home of entertainer Michael Jackson's parents to satisfy part of a $1.3-million default judgment in connection with the purchase of a guitar company. "This is a tempest is a teapot," said Brian Oxman, attorney for Joseph and Katherine Jackson. Oxman said the seizure was illegal because the couple had not been served with court papers before the default judgment was obtained.

A mist is falling. A fog shrouds the hills, and on Miller Street 100 voices angrily join to skewer a passing reporter Thursday morning. Michael Jackson fans might be taken with his message of love, but they have none to share with the press -- in this case, Court TV's Diane Dimond, whom they see as the prosecutors' mouthpiece. "She should be so fired," said Lacey Reinhardt, a 20-year-old amusement park supervisor from Murrieta.