Justin Timberlake Attacks Media For Mauling Janet Jackson  8/21/06

Justin Timberlake has blasted the American media for unfairly picking on Janet Jackson following her infamous breast-baring Super Bowl shocker - because she's a black woman.

The Cry Me a River singer was performing with Jackson during the Super Bowl half-time show in 2004 when a planned costume-ripping sequence became a "wardrobe malfunction" that shocked the world.

But Timberlake feels his duet partner on that fateful day was harshly treated by the media at a time when there were bigger international stories to report about.

He says, "If you consider it 50/50 - I probably got 10 per cent of the blame and that says something about society. I think that America's harsher on women and I think that America's unfairly harsh on ethnic people."

Timberlake tells MTV News he accepts he didn't deal with the aftermath of the breast-baring incident well and now he feels he shouldn't have been so quick to distance himself from the scandal - and from Jackson.

He adds, "I didn't handle it the best way I could have but you get your bumps and bruises from it and you learn."