New Documentary Will Reveal Who Is To Blame For Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl Incident

The New York Times is getting ready to release their full documentary on the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl debacle. The series titled, “The New York Times Presents Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson” will air on FX and Hulu starting this Friday at 10 pm. The documentary is set to explore different sides of the incident that took place in 2004. It seems important to point that out because something like that happening today is just called a Miley Cyrus concert. Naturally, it doesn’t get a lot of attention anymore. At the time society was seemingly not as open to nudity on national TV. Particularly not in the most-watched event of the year. Things got real bad between Janet, Justin, and the producers of the Super Bowl show that at the time were employed by MTV.

Janet Jackson’s Decision Sparked An Emotional Moment For MTV Producers

There’s no nicer way to say this, it seems that as Janet Jackson’s boob popped out, the world started to crumble around the folks who were producing the show. Particularly because according to one producer it wasn’t MTV’s idea for something like that to go down. They pretty much knew right then and there though that the company was going to be stripped of the opportunity to produce the Super Bowl half-time show moving forward because of the incident. Former MTV senior vice president Salli Frattini recalls her emotions after the incident,

“I was a wreck, personally, and I pretty much just lost it. I was in tears. People were crying. It was really upsetting. It’s very emotional. I felt betrayed,”

The Folks At MTV Did Not Know Justin & Janet Jackson Had This Planned

As we mentioned right out of the gate, folks at MTV knew that they were going to be taking the fall for the incident. Their biggest issue with the whole thing was the fact that they did not approve of the stunt. The question that remains to this day is, who did? Salli Frattini who produced the show has a theory of how things went down.

“My instincts told me that there was a private conversation between wardrobe, stylist and artist where someone thought this would be a good idea, and it backfired.”

Were The Performers Ever Held Accountable For Their Actions?

MTV and its parent company went hard after Janet Jackson in the aftermath of the incident. They blacklisted all of her music from the channel and other partner radio stations. That wouldn’t be a massive issue today, but it certainly was back then. Justin Timberlake on the other hand seemingly got off easy. With the new information that we’ve gotten from the documentary, we can kind of assume why that was the case. According to Frattini Justin was cornered by the producers after the show. He apologized and said he believed that MTV knew something like this was going down. Janet on the other hand, bailed that night and didn’t own up to anything. Frattini mentioned,

“Janet never said anything to us. Here we are trying to ask the person that this has happened to … and she was gone,” Frattini then talked about Justin saying, “Then we sought out Justin. We pulled him aside one-to-one. ‘Justin, what just happened?’ He’s like, ‘That was never meant to happen. I was told you guys knew.”

Was it Janet’s idea then? Who really was to blame?