Jackson Trial Leaves NBC Correspondent Mike Taibbi “Dispirited & Soiled”

NBC News correspondent Mike Taibbi is ready for the Michael Jackson trial to be over:

“I have never liked this story and would never have chosen this assignment,” he writes on MSNBC.com with surprising candor. Few assignments “have left me feeling dispirited and soiled at the end of a day’s work, as this one has. There are others in this press corps who feel the same way, and many of my colleagues and friends and intimates back home have declined to follow this story at all.”

More: “It feels voyeuristic, and for a dozen years it has been voyeuristic. There are ‘journalists’ who’ve maintained careers by chasing down and breathlessly reporting every Jackson rumor peddled by real or would-be ‘witnesses’ to the singer’s every move. Many of those rumors, enhanced by each sale and re-sale to the tabloids (print and broadcast), became embedded in the public consciousness because, in the past decade and a half, mainstream journalism itself and its relationship to ‘tabloid’ stories have changed.”

He’s ready to go home. His commentary is a must-read…

> Also: Lisa Daniels: “Before you declare yourself ill with ‘Jackson-itis,’ remind yourself, even he will be doing our country some good.”