Jackson: 'Press abuse was racism'

Michael Jackson reportedly believed that he was bullied by the media because of the colour of his skin.

During recently-released taped interviews between the late singer and his friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach from 1999 to 2001, Jackson claimed that he was the victim of much media scrutiny because he was the first black star to win over a white audience.

Contactmusic quotes him as saying: "You had [Harry] Belafonte, you had Sammy [Davis Jr], you had Nat King Cole. People loved their music, but they didn't get adulation, they didn't get crying.

"I was the first one to break the ice, break the mould, where white girls, Scottish girls, Irish girls are screaming, 'I'm in love with you, I want to...' And that gave a lot of the white press, they didn't like that, and that's why they started the stories; 'He's weird, he's gay, he sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, he wants to buy the Elephant Man bones'.

"Anything that turned people against me. They tried their hardest."