I truly appreciate your help in protecting Michael Jackson's legacy, the contribution of Black artists to popular culture, and taking one step towards a more just representation of not only Michael Jackson but the institutional narrative surrounding Black musical excellence. Please sign and share if you believe public-trust media must be held legally and ethically accountable to fair, accurate, and culturally informed standards.

We are launching this petition to demand immediate structural accountability, a formal editorial review, and the termination of NPR Music Critic Ann Powers due to a persistent, multi-year portfolio of racially biased, culturally insensitive, and factually deficient coverage targeting global Black icon Michael Jackson.

A comprehensive review of Powers' work across National Public Radio—spanning her early columns, her 2014 critiques, her May 2019 essay, and her subsequent 2024 legacy panel appearances—reveals an egregious breach of the foundational journalistic standards of fairness, accuracy, and objectivity. Powers continuously weaponizes a dismissive lens of white entitlement to overwrite a monumental Black cultural icon, completely ignoring the lived experience and cultural history of the Black community.

While Michael Jackson broke historic industry barriers from the 1980s onward—achieving unparalleled sales, streaming records, and a permanent mark on global popular culture—Powers’ writing works diligently to reduce his legacy to uncorroborated, financially motivated narratives. She explicitly prioritizes highly subjective, personal emotional responses (describing listening to his music as a struggle against "nausea" and framing his persona as "sick" or "evil") while treating contemporary white artists with strict artistic reverence, whom worth noting haven't achieved near Jackson's sales, fan base, or musical legacy. It's also worth noting, she goes as far as to contribute Michael Jackon's world- wide sucess to the studios and studio musicians he had access to versus acknowledging the evident talent the world sees in Jackson. 

Furthermore, this coverage represents a severe double standard and structural failure in public media:

Defamatory Factual Erasure: Powers completely erases Michael Jackson’s historic status as one of global music’s greatest humanitarians, entirely omitting his official Guinness World Record for charity work, his hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, and his lifelong advocacy for underprivileged children.

Disregard for Due Process: Powers bypasses Jackson’s absolute 2005 legal exoneration (State v. Jackson, Case No. 1133603), where a multi-year FBI and law enforcement investigation featuring exhaustive searches found him not guilty on every single count.

Weaponizing Slander: NPR has allowed Powers to present the entirely uncorroborated documentary Leaving Neverland—widely recognized as defamatory—as a factual basis to launch unchecked character assassinations against a deceased artist who cannot defend himself.

NPR's internal Ethics Handbook explicitly mandates "fairness, accuracy, and transparency." Yet, leadership continues to shield this reporter under the loopholed guise of "editorial freedom" and "subjective opinion." When opinion actively erases legal facts and humanitarian history to systematically degrade Black cultural contributions, it crosses from criticism into institutional misconduct.

As license-fee payers, public media supporters, and consumers, we refuse to allow our public airwaves and corporate advertising dollars (from sponsors like Capital One, Amazon, and LinkedIn) to subsidize racially charged character defamation.

We demand:The immediate removal of Ann Powers from NPR's music and culture desks.
A formal internal newsroom investigation into the factual basis and racial double standards of her portfolio.
An official retraction or editorial correction of her biased 2019 essay and related content.