Michael Jackson: Celebrities Are Targets

By Stephen M. Silverman

02/04/2005 at 08:40 AM EST

With the gag order in his child-molestation trial momentarily lifted so he can answer damaging press leaks about him, Michael Jackson tells Geraldo Rivera in a TV interview airing Saturday that the stories are "fiction" and his celebrity makes him a target.

Jackson, 46, goes on to state, among many topics he covers on the FOX News Channel's At Large w/ Geraldo Rivera, that the truth about him will ultimately come out.

"The bigger the star, the bigger the target. I'm not trying to say I'm the super-duper star, I'm not saying that," Jackson said in the interview, which was taped two weeks ago, the Associated Press reports. (FOX released transcripts on Thursday.)

"I'm saying the fact that people come at celebrities, we're targets," says Jackson. "But truth always prevails. I believe in that."

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Explaining why his home is an amusement park, Jackson says: "I created Neverland as a home for myself and my children ... it gave me a chance to do what I couldn't do when I was little. We couldn't go to movie theaters. We couldn't go to Disneyland. We couldn't do all those fun things. We were on tour. We were working hard."

Now that he's an adult, Jackson says: "Other men have their Ferraris and their airplanes or helicopter or wherever they find their bliss. My bliss is in giving and sharing and having simple innocent fun."

Making the interview rounds to promote the interview, Rivera, 61, says he believes Jackson is innocent of the charges against him.