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McCann Story: European Media
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the subsequent naming of her parents as suspects continues to dominate the headlines.
A quick check of Google News for various countries shows Britain with 3184 recent stories on Maddie's disappearance, France with 1014, Spain with 1300, Germany with 810 and the Netherlands with 513. In Sweden, it continues to be the top story, with 129 links; It is also the top story in Portugal, understandably, with 650 news headlines. Across the pond, AP is listing stories about the McCann affair as the "most read stories" on many US newspaper websites.
Public interest is clearly intense; however, criticism is coming from some quarters about the level of media investment in the story of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
In a column for the Guardian titled Media Madness, former journalist and MP Martin Bell says that the BBC has spent too much time and space covering the case, "and it should ask itself why."
"I cannot remember a time, before the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, when such sparse fragments of fact were spun into so many acres of print and hours of broadcast news coverage over so many months," he writes (...)
"(The BBC) has not only followed, but in some cases led, the stampede - as if this news story were the second coming and the Normandy landings rolled into one. Reporters, sub-anchors and anchors have been despatched to southern Portugal at great cost and in unjustifiable numbers. They have emoted and waved their arms about without restraint or enlightenment. The coverage has been mawkish and exploitative in its manner as well as its volume. The dignity of the parents, in the face of this media madness, has been truly remarkable."
"It is not as if there is nothing else going on in the world."
Bell points out continued violence in Iraq, a report on the efficacity of the "US Surge." He notes the level of gun crime in Britain, something at least with a theme.
Shockingly, however, he reports that the BBC is pouring ever more resources into the McCann story while scaling back coverage of Afghanistan - where, as you might be aware, Britain is at war:
"Economies are being made in its operations so that its Kabul office will no longer have the services of a full-time camera team", he continues,
"Is this so that still more teams could have been despatched to Portugal, or now to Leicestershire, so that the McCann family can continue to be pursued by cameras wherever they go? And what possible purpose can this serve?"
Bell complains that the BBC's news editorial line seems to be set by focus groups and audience research: People might want to hear about the McCann story, he seems to be saying, but the Beeb should be giving them something else. Ironically, his article has gathered nearly 200 comments to date, many of them outlining ever more outlandish conspiracy theories about Maddie McCann's disappearance and the backgrounds of her parents, Kate and Gerry.
Ray Greenslade, who runs the Guardian's media blog, also writes about the unprecedented scale of the coverage. He too gets dozens of remarks from readers, mostly in agreement.
Bell's point that the entire incident since May has been spun out from so few facts is important. Even yesterday's "Maddie: Crucial Events" timelines were sparse, from the disappearance of the child to her parents being named as suspects by police. Back in the first Gulf War and up to the invasion of Afghanistan, 24 hour "rolling news" channels such as CNN and later the BBC were criticised because the need to provide viewers with something, anything on events meant pointless interviews with minor officials or worse, speculation without any evidence to back it up.
The events of this summer in Portugal involve even fewer people, yet have led to a similar media campaign. There are the McCann family; the Portuguese police; the British DNA scientists; and a previous suspect, Robert Murat. That's it. The events of the disappearance and the aftermath, while dramatic, are few. Yet endless experts, family friends, columnists and journalists have been invited to opine on the story.
This morning, SKY News ("never wrong for long") reported confidently that blood from the little girl had indeed been discovered in the hire car. Now, the broadcaster has changed its story to report that it was body fluids and hair from Maddie that police discovered. An exact DNA match became a possible match, and then an exact match again. Shortly afterwards it's a 90 percent match. Rumours are now circulating about the veracity of the tests.
Indeed, the media have become part of the case for the defence: The McCann's are said to have somehow hidden their daughter's body, transferring it to a car they hired three weeks after her disappearance and taken it to an undisclosed location for burial. With the world's camera crews following their every move, how on earth were they to have done this?
However, the public imagination has been captured by this story; it does not appear likely to go away soon.
