Update - And the Fan Fare goes on. (See below)

Another day, another Michael Jackson drug story.

Since the King of Pop died last Thursday of cardiac arrest, many news outlets and reporters have seized on his possible prescription drug use as a reason. It makes for a good story and, after all, the King of Pop did admit to an addiction to painkillers in his past.

Update here: Saturday’s spotlight shone on a group of at least five physicians who prescribed drugs to Jackson, according to an unnamed law enforcment sources cited in a Los Angeles Times story.

Friday’s headlines quote an unnamed Los Angeles law enforcement official as saying police found Diprivan, which also goes by Propofol, in his rented Los Angeles mansion. Earlier this week at various times, we heard about needle marks in his body, a nurse whom he had begged for drugs, a stomach full of pills and a head with only fuzz on top. In the immediate days after his death, the key was demerol use.

 Most all sourced to unnamed people familiar with the situation — in some way.

The chase for news about Jackson’s drug use this past week mirrors the scramble to get news of his memorial service and funeral these past two days. (Read our blog about that here.) A public memorial was going to be Thursday, then Sunday, then maybe Monday, before it became Tuesday. A funeral would be at Neverland, and then at Forest Lawn cemetery and still no one really knows. And so it goes on.

In these stories, there’s always a scramble for news. It happens. (Anyone remember David Carradine and autoerotic asphyxiation.) That’s not saying we’re going to ignore the question of whether Michael Jackson died of a possible drug overdose. Or, other parts of the dark side to Michael. We haven’t. (Read about that here.) After all, where there’s smoke…

But chatter about memorials and innuendoes of drug use are two different things. One is an event, the other impacts a legacy. And so, we leave to you. Michael Jackson, was he on drugs when he died? And if so, why? Or, is all the media speculation, as Shakespeare said, much ado about nothing?

Every year in Hollywood when the long, hot days of summer set in, some story comes along to shake up the media, and reporters seem to bite into it like a dog with a bone. Absent anything else going on in town, that story is becomes the tale of Hollywood’s summer.

So far, early in this summer of 2009,  the story has been celebrity deaths. When Karl Malden died yesterday, he was added to a growing list of celebrities who either died after long illnesses or suddenly, topped off by the King of Pop himself Michael Jackson.

When Jackson died last week, fans across the world went into shock and are still waiting news of an official funeral or public memorial.

Also catching fans by surprise was the strange demise of “Kung Fu” actor David Carradine, who was found in the closet of his Bangkok hotel on June 4. A pathologist who oversaw a private autopsy told

Reuters the cause of death was asphyxiation, but so far an official cause has not been released by Thai police.

However, most of the stars who have passed on to that major studio in the sky were in poor health or had a serious illness.

Farrah Fawcett, the 1970s icon who captivated teenage boys with her smile and golden wavy hair, ended her struggle with cancer on June 25, the same day Jackson died.

Ed McMahon, America’s favorite sidekick on NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” died on June 23 at 86 and had battled a series of illnesses.

Karl Malden, who won acclaim for his roles in “A Streetcar Named

Desire” and “On the Waterfront,” had been in failing health in

recent years. The actor, famous for playing ordinary guys, died in his sleep on July 1. He was 97.

And over the weekend, there were three other deaths: impressionist and singer Fred Travalena, who could voice nearly everyone from Bugs Bunny to George W. Bush; pitchman Billy Mays; and 1950s sitcom star Gale Storm. Maybe they were not all on the A-list. But they were well-known during their time.

The real question is whether the stretch of celebrity deaths is over? There is an old saying that celebrity deaths come in threes, and so far, we’ve had far more than three.

Police in Thailand are working to solve the mystery of actor David Carradine’s death last week in a Bangkok hotel, and they have said not to expect any answers for a month.

His family, however, is ready to settle at least one question: whether the media should publish photos said to be the actor’s body, discovered naked and hanging in his Bangkok hotel room on June 4. 

Carradine’s death has sparked intense media speculation about how he died (Click here for that story). Theories have ranged from suicide to murder to accidental autoerotic asphyxiation. All are speculative, none are confirmed.

When a Thai newspaper, Thai Rath, which is known for lively coverage of crime and celebrities, published grainy photos on Saturday that it claimed showed Carradine’s hanging body, an attorney for the actor’s brother, Keith Carradine, said the family will take legal action against people or media outlets that publish the photos.

“The family wants it understood that … any persons, publications or media outlets will be fully prosecuted for invasion of privacy and causing severe emotional distress if the photos are published,” said the statement from attorney Mark Geragos.

Thai police have declined to confirm the authenticity of the photos. (Click here for that story). They did say media were not present at the crime scene and the picture was not leaked by them. Thai Rath did not give a source for the photograph or show the face. We here on the Fan Fare blog have seen it online, and at best it appears highly suspect.

The events bring to mind the leaked police photo of Rihanna after she was allegedly attacked by singer Chris Brown back in February. The photo caused a stir and was not published by some media outlets but was published by others. A key difference was that it was said to be a police photograph, which was later substantiated, and it was clearly Rihanna.

Media outlets daily juggle questions of what should and should not be published, and each case often has a different answer depending on details. The story of Carradine’s death and the speculative information on how he died, as well as the photo published by Thai Rath, have again sparked debate here among some of our reporters on what details should and/or should not be published.

We thought Fan Fare readers might like a chance to tell us what they think. So, when does publishing salacious details — real or imagined – of a death and, perhaps, a real photo go too far? Or, put another way, when does the right to privacy trump the public’s right to know?

Actor David Carradine, who police said on Thursday was found hanged in his Bangkok hotel room, is best known for playing Shaolin martial arts master Caine in the 1970s television series  “Kung Fu,” but he had shining moments in a number of more artistically challenging projects, such as the 1976 movie  “Bound for Glory” that saw him play folk legend Woody Guthrie and as an expatriate American watching Germany go fascist in the 1977 film  “The Serpent’s Egg”.

Reviewing “Bound for Glory,” film critic Roger Ebert of newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “David Carradine’s performance as Guthrie finds just the right balance between his pride and innate simplicity.”

Film website IMDB says Carradine was the only actor ever to have appeared in films directed by Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Quentin Tarantino, a trio of acclaimed directors with very different perspectives. Carradine played a drunk in Scorsese’s 1973 “Mean Streets,” Bergman directed him in “The Serpent’s Egg” and he was the title character in Tarantino’s 2003 movie “Kill Bill: Vol. 1″ and the 2004 follow-up “Kill Bill: Vol. 2.” 

But after his 1970s rise to fame, Carradine faded from view, appearing in a number of low-budget productions but always staying on the screen. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2004, he described himself as a “renegade” in the movie industry who had suffered from a bad reputation. Tarantino put Carradine in the spotlight again, first with a flattering mention in his 1994 movie “Pulp Fiction,” when Samuel L. Jackson’s character talked about planning to “walk the earth … like Caine in ‘Kung Fu.’” Then came the roles in Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies.

By that point, Carradine had starred in more than 100 films. Many of them had gone straight to video. But Carradine said in an interview with British newspaper The Independent that Tarantino told him he had seen nearly all of the actor’s movies. “He was lying, but he’s certainly seen a bunch of them,” Carradine wryly added.

Here’s the update. Carradine on Tuesday will guest star in the television drama “Mental” on U.S. network Fox. Carradine plays a famous professor who was struck by lightning and fell into a catatonic state, in the episode taped a year ago.