By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, November 2011
In mid-November 2011, FishbowlLA covered a complicated media-ethics-and-litigation story: as the documentary Michael Jackson and the Doctor: A Fatal Friendship was set to air on MSNBC, creditors of Conrad Murray sued NBCUniversal. Murray had reportedly been paid around $300,000 by NBCU to appear in the film.
Then
The November 2011 moment was right at the end of the Conrad Murray involuntary-manslaughter trial. The reported $300,000 payment to Murray for the documentary appearance raised the substantive media-ethics question of paying a criminal defendant for participation in a documentary about the case — “checkbook journalism.”
The creditors’ lawsuit added a further layer: Murray faced substantial financial liabilities, and his creditors were arguing for a claim on the documentary fee.
Now
Conrad Murray served about two years of his four-year sentence and was released in October 2013. The checkbook-journalism question the episode raised has continued to be a recurring media-ethics concern, particularly as the streaming-era true-crime documentary boom has put pressure on the question of compensating subjects.
The 2011 piece reads now as one early data point in a media-ethics question the streaming-era true-crime boom has only made more pressing.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.