How that bad man made Michael think he was nice

WASHINGTON–Mike Darnell has done it again.
The evil genius (and we mean that in the best possible sense) behind Fox’s reality programming has secured U.S. broadcast rights to a private video that Michael Jackson says shows British journalist Martin Bashir praising his parenting skills to the hilt.
Fox will broadcast ”Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn’t Show You” on Feb. 20 from 8 to 10 p.m.–the same time period in which ABC News broadcast Bashir’s damning documentary ”Living With Michael Jackson” two weeks earlier and snagged 27 million viewers.
According to Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman, the pop star’s private video includes footage shot four or five days after the interview process with Bashir began, and footage from the very last interview with Jackson, during which Bashir quizzed him about allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to 1993.
In the documentary, Bashir said he became concerned about Jackson’s behavior toward his children while in Berlin, where Jackson made front-page news when he dangled his youngest child from the fourth-floor balcony of his hotel room.
But Backerman says footage Jackson had shot from their final interview, conducted some time after the Berlin trip, shows Bashir continuing to praise Jackson’s parenting skills.
”I predict this will change ABC’s policy on how they receive this stuff in the future,” Backerman told The TV Column. ”It’s going to blow (viewers’) minds as to what Bashir said relative to what came out in the ’20/20′ special.”
”MJ Take 2” also includes an extensive interview with Debbie Rowe, who is mom to Jackson’s two older children.
That interview, conducted after the Bashir documentary aired, was by an ”outside journalist we brought in to ensure objectivity,” Backerman said.
Jackson’s reps were swamped with phone calls from various TV networks and programs trying to snag the rights to his video.
Darnell ”presented the best package that would support Michael’s position,” Backerman said. ”Fox was ”extremely sympathetic as to how he was initially portrayed and in essence gave us what we felt was the best exposure possibility.
”He’s been treated extremely shabbily by the press in general but particularly by Bashir, and we wanted to get a company that would be able to … show the full details of the situation, so the general public all over the world would get a very clear, no-discrepancy picture.
”He thought it was going to be a beautiful thing,” Backerman said of the Bashir documentary. ”When you see this on the 20th, you see Bashir led him to believe they were friends, close. … Believe me, when you look at this tape, it’s clear (Jackson) must have thought, for the first time somebody has been there for me. Which is why he was so blown out subsequently.”