Lay off the McCanns, 03 June 2007

Lay off the McCanns The Sunday Times India Knight June 3, 2007 I wrote about Madeleine McCann just after she'd been abducted, and was quite startled by my postbag. Roughly half the letters sympathised impotently with Gerry and Kate McCann; the other half were entirely, and brutally, condemnatory. Who leaves three toddlers unattended for half an hour at a time, they asked? The McCanns were "asking for it", they were "selfish", they were "criminally careless". I hardly think so: leaving small children alone is never wise, but most of us avoid doing it because we're frightened of choking, not of marauding child-snatchers; if we believed that paedophiles lurk around every corner, we'd all go insane and never leave the house. I was really taken aback by these letters, chiefly because when an unspeakably awful thing happens, compassion seems a saner and more appropriate response than being smugly judgmental. Anyway: here we are again, a month on. Madeleine is still missing, her picture still appears in most newspapers every day, and I don't know quite where the compassion percentage stands at today. There is clearly a growing rumble of unease out there at the McCanns' omnipresence in the papers and on television. No aspect of their grief is deemed too private to share with the media. We've watched them in church, we've watched them walking about, we've seen their other two children, we've seen poor beribboned Kate McCann clutching pathetically at Madeleine's favourite toy. They were in Rome last week, where they briefly met the Pope; soon they'll be off to a slew of other countries, cameras in tow, to broaden out their campaign. And it is a campaign, involving appeals or offers of support from David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, even Gordon Brown. Whoever is orchestrating it deserves an award. Enough, detractors say. A hundred children go missing in Britain every year: what about them? Do we know even one of their names? The answer, shamefully, is no. But two wrongs don't make a right: would it be preferable for Madeleine to become an anonymous statistic too? Would ignoring the McCanns and their desperate appeal somehow honour the other 100 nameless missing children? It’s hard to see how. The argument then moves on to the cynicism and sentimentality of the media, which apparently feeds the public's fundamentally unwholesome and voyeuristic hunger for images of a lost child and her distraught parents. Well, er, yeah: full marks, Sherlock. Nothing new there: one of the bestselling books in the country at the moment is called Please, Daddy, No. It is one of many in the same genre, and it is an unfortunate fact that the public's appetite for horrific "true" stories involving children being abused seems, disturbingly, almost infinite. The question is, does it matter that some people's avid following of the McCanns' story undoubtedly involves prurience and a strange sort of hunger for the gory detail? Not really, no. The point, surely, is that somebody somewhere knows or suspects what happened to Madeleine, and that her parents are desperate to attract that person's attention by any means necessary. If, on the way, they make some of us feel uncomfortable, or voyeuristic, or even, whisper it, compassion-fatigued, that's entirely our problem. God knows theirs is greater. Speaking of God: what really brought the nay-sayers out of the woodwork was the McCanns' attendance at mass in St Peter's Square last week. They are devout Catholics; they met the Pope for a few minutes afterwards; he appeared to bless a photograph of Madeleine. Unacceptable, according to some woman on Newsnight for whom this was the final straw: the McCann story had now become about "religion and faith". What an extraordinary statement. Here are two parents, stuck in hell, not even afforded the dubious comfort of grieving. Love the Pope, hate the Pope, meeting him helped them and brought them comfort. Do we really need to sit in judgment? The boring leftie middle-class response to the McCanns' story - clumsily seeking to intellectualise an event to which most people respond only viscerally - has echoes of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Reams were written at the time about how Britain had gone mad, how this syrupy sentimentality was entirely puzzling, how the writer felt like an alien in his or her own country, how he or she really didn't care that much, how plenty of women died every day, how the fuss and the grief were entirely disproportionate and we'd all be terribly embarrassed in the cold light of day. You sensed that the writers of those articles felt brave, like they were boldly sticking their heads above the parapet, speaking up for a significant minority. Which I'm sure they were - though perhaps not as heroically as they'd envisaged — just like the commentators expressing their discomfort at the magnitude of the McCann campaign. But what's the point, exactly? It is an act of off-the-scale egoism to base your view of a situation such as this one only on whether it makes you feel "comfortable" or not. What has anyone's "comfort" got to do with anything? The facts are simple: a child was snatched; her parents are in despair; the Portuguese police seem worse than inept. Someone knows what happened to Madeleine. What are the parents to do? (Three days or so after Madeleine disappeared, and the media circus was already in full flow, an enterprising reporter drove over the border to Spain with a photograph of her. He was met with only blank looks: despite nonstop coverage of the story here, no one he spoke to had any idea who she was.) The McCann family's story is like any other in this respect: you can think what you like. You can be interested, you can be bored. You can leave News 24 on in the background, or you can watch Big Brother instead. You can hope for the best, or fear the worst. You can say a prayer, or rant about the Pope. It's up to you, because you can always turn the page and move on to something you consider more interesting or more cheerful, something that makes you feel more "comfortable". That luxury does not exist for the McCanns. They can't turn the page. They can only generate more headlines, because they believe that the end of headlines is the end of hope. Who among us would look them in the eye and condemn them for it?

My experience of Maddie's resort in Praia de Luz, the Algarve, 09 May 2007

My experience of Maddie's resort in Praia de Luz, the Algarve thisismoney.co.uk   Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money May 09, 2007   I need to break from the usual financial slant of posts on this blog. I'm sure you'll understand as I thing's it's important to give my views on this...   My family and I returned last week relaxed from a holiday at the sleepy end of Portugal's Algarve. We were, however, stunned to wake on Friday morning, days after we returned, to hear news that a girl, three-year-old Madeleine McCann, had gone missing from the same complex, yards from where we stayed.   We picked the Ocean Club resort in Praia de Luz, a quiet village, because of its connections with Mark Warner Holidays. The company has a growing reputation among families for offering comprehensive childcare wrapped in packages with free sports activities, such as tennis and water sports. The balance of a family holiday with time to relax away from the kids is attractive to millions of Britons.   We had a great time, able to spend time together as a family while also having some time out. Sam, our two-year-old son, was well looked after while we lounged by the pool, or why I played tennis or sailed. My wife Andrea and I even made nightly jaunts to local restaurants, a rare treat for new parents.   Luz, as the locals call it, is a laid back resort with a mix of Portugese holidaymakers and locals and, in off-peak May, a smaller number of foreign tourists. A handful of restaurants and bars in the town have a balance of mainly British families and friendly locals. This is an area you would not associate with crime, let alone the abduction of a child.   The Ocean Club has several hubs. One is a 24-hour reception, the other two have swimming pools, restaurants and tennis courts. At their furthest point, these centres are 10 minutes walk apart. In between are Ocean Club apartments mixed with local homes.   The options for childcare were numerous, well organised and of a very high standard. A well-staffed nursery with a child-to-carer ratio that was often just two-to-one, took youngsters from 9.30 to 12.30 every day and from 2.30 to 5.30 in the afternoon.   These creche facilities were next to the poolside Tapas restaurant where Madeleine's parents were eating when she disappeared.   Madeleine and the younger twins Amelie and Sean were sleeping at the McCanns' apartment overlooking the swimming pool at the main hub of the resort. Around that pool was the Tapas bar which was in high demand every night. Most guests went to the buffet at the Ocean Club's Millennium restaurant, a 10-minute walk away from the McCanns' apartment. But eager guests would queue from 9am to book one of the limited number of tables at the Tapas bar, which served barbecued fish and meat dishes to order. Both restaurants were included in the price of the holiday.   The McCanns' choice to leave their children at the flat and make regular checks is surprising given the alternatives. In their defence, they may have been expecting, as advertised in Mark Warner brochures, a 'listening service'. Staff told us that the service had been discontinued because the apartments were too spread out. The resort, however, offered a baby-sitting service for 15 euros (£10) an hour, which was staffed by a member of the daytime nursery teams, or a 'dining out club'. This involved parents dropping off children at the crèche where they would be supervised watching videos until they went to sleep. Parents would then return before 11.30 to scoop up their sleepy offspring.   I can imagine the McCanns' dilemma. The 'dining out club' was more than a five-minute walk from where the McCanns stayed along cobbled streets or a winding pedestrian path through the apartments. It's not far - it worked brilliantly for us on most nights - but it would have felt much further if you had to ferry thee children there and back (and hope they were still asleep after doing so). Plus parents were required to wait until children under two, which includes the McCanns' twins, were asleep. We talked to parents who said this was enough to put them off the option.   The McCanns opted instead to eat 40-50m from their apartment, not much more than a pool's width away. They hoped it would be just close enough to hear a crying baby but with bar music playing and restaurant hubbub, it wasn't close enough to hear what happened to Madeleine that night.   I can't imagine what they're going through now. I, along with millions others, only hope they can find her soon and safe.

So what is a parent to do?, 12 May 2007

So what is a parent to do? Daily Mirror   Fiona Phillips 12/05/2007    TWO mums confided to me this week that their children had "incidents" on holiday after being left in kids' clubs.   I won't go into the cases for privacy reasons, but both involved childcare workers acting in an inappropriate way. It has affected family holidays and both mums blame themselves for leaving their children with strangers.   So to all the smug, judgmental parents who have questioned why Kate and Gerry McCann did not make use of the Mark Warner resort creche facilities, or employ babysitters for little Madeleine and her brother and sister while they ate in a restaurant just yards away - it could have happened to any of you.   I have no doubt that Mark Warner staff are perfectly professional, but as parents we do what we think is right for our children. And if the McCanns thought it was better to leave theirs sleeping in an apartment in a holiday resort chosen for its child-friendliness rather than placing a stranger in the same room as their precious toddlers, who's to say they're wrong?   Kate's mum Susan says: "You make a decision and think it's OK. This time it wasn't and Kate and Gerry must live with that."   The fact is, on holiday, away from the stresses and strains of daily life, and especially in a resort renowned for family holidays, we'd all be lulled into a sense that nothing can harm us.   We do things we might not do at home - there's no way the McCanns would have left their tots sleeping in their bedrooms while they went to the local restaurant back in Leicestershire.   We often left ours sleeping upstairs in a hotel room while we dined downstairs until one night, when they were two and five, we were told they were running up and down the landing screaming and calling for Mummy.   I have never felt so wretched - seeing two tear-stained faces looking questioningly at me as if to say "Why did you leave us?" is an image that has stayed with me.   Now we take them with us or leave them with babysitters - babysitters who are sometimes male, often complete strangers whose credentials we don't check.   What are we to do? Not go out on our own? Not go on holiday? Or trust that our faith in human kindness will prevail? In the end that's all we can do.

Source Of Sources, 13 May 2007

Source Of Sources Sky News   Martin Brunt, Sky News crime correspondent May 13, 2007    'Sky sources' are a bit thin on the ground here in the Algarve.   There's no sidling up to a friendly cop for a quick natter away from the cameras. No slipping off for a cappuccino and an off-the-record chat...or "guidance" as we call it.   So I really don't know. if the police have any real idea what happened to Madeleine McCann. I suspect they don't.   I'm having to rely for information on the local Portuguese Press whose accuracy is sometimes highly questionable.   One paper seems to have good contacts. The rest of the stuff is best described as "culhoes". In neighbouring Spain that would be "cojones."   Each morning, with the help of a translator, I have to pick my way through the minefield of flyers.   At breakfast time I can get away with attributing the stories to the local papers. Later I try to turn them into fact.   I imagine somebody has the unenviable task of doing much the same for Madeleine's parents Gerry and Kate.   The couple must sometimes despair at the media interest, but they know we are their best hope in finding witnesses.   The police are doing nothing to appeal for the public's help. They continue to hide behind the country's secrecy law, which even prevented them from issuing a description of the clothes Madeleine was wearing.   It's the law, but that doesn't make it right. There's a feeling that law will be repealed after being held up to so much global ridicule.   One morning Gerry and Kate McCann told a colleague of mine "Please, it's Madeleine, not Maddy."   We've all been guilty of that. They've lost their daughter once, they don't want her taken and renamed by the media.   Written by Martin, May 13, 2007   *   Response in 'Comments' section from Paulo Reis:   Sir, Your comments are appalling, disgusting, offensive and nauseating. The only thing that I agree with you, was when you wrote "[…] I really don't know". Right! That’s the only truth in your post. Your classification of the Portuguese Press as "colhões" [that's the right way of spelling], the vernacular translation of "testicles" and a word no educated person would ever mention in front of women of kids, is the most offensive and unfair I ever heard. What you call a "minefield of flyers" is a serious, professional and ethically oriented, non-tabloid coverage of the sad event of Madeleine abduction. I'll make available, at my web page (Gazeta Digital - http://www.gazetadigital.blogspot.com/), within a couple of hours, headlines and highlights of the Portuguese Press from the last days, with pictures of front pages and links to the stories online. This may allow British viewers and readers to have a conclusion about how wrong you are, with your racist comments, more proper from a member the Schutzstaffel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS). You, Mr. Martin Blunt, are a good (?) example of those howling blood-thirsty British tabloid journalists, willing to kill – or let someone be killed – to have a story. That's ok with me, as you keep this low form of life inside your country and don't export it to Portugal. Most of the British journalists, reporting from Algarve, behave as if they were following a National Geographic expedition to study the not-so-long-ago-cannibal tribes in the deep jungles of New-Guinea. But you, Mr. Martin Blunt and the journalists and editors of Daily Mail and The Telegraph, went a little further and showed how deep is your fidelity to the ideas of the author of "Der Mythus des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts" [The Myth of the XX Century]. Hope you are aware that this post is what is considered, both in British Law and Portuguese Law, an offensive remark, made through the media (aggravated circumstance…). Now, it's not the right moment to do it, but I can promise you that, once Madeleine McCann case is closed – and I hope, with Maddy being reunited with her parents – you will heard, not from me, but from my solicitor. Paulo Reis Jornalista (Carteira Profissional nº 734) Gazeta Digital (http://gazetadigital.blogspot.com/)   Posted by: Paulo Reis 13 May 2007 19:08:02

The British media does not do responsibility. It does stories, 18 May 2007

The British media does not do responsibility. It does stories Guardian   The frenzied reporting of the missing McCann child serves neither the interests of the family nor the cause of justice   Simon Jenkins  Friday May 18 2007    The media coverage of the missing McCann child has largely escaped censure. This is because it concerns an ongoing tragedy and because the grief of those directly involved is so real. Neither justifies freedom from comment. The coverage has been absurdly over the top and cannot have served the interests of the family, or the eventual cause of justice.   I was astonished to see the BBC news department sending its star presenter, Huw Edwards, to southern Portugal to handle what was essentially a single thread story with at least two other onscreen reporters in place. The corporation must be stiff with under-employed staff. Presumably as a result of this decision, the McCanns regularly led the 6 o'clock news, ahead of Gordon Brown's leadership bid - even when there was nothing new to report from the Algarve.   In this voracious feeding frenzy the media presence in Portimao was reduced to extremes of invention to justify the prominence the story was getting back home. We learned of false sightings, car chases, child traffickers, barren women, beach paedophiles and dark dungeons. A "suspect" was enveloped in private detective work way beyond any consideration for natural justice. The sympathy a reader or viewer was bound to feel for the McCanns was overwhelmed in an exploitative swarm. Star footballers were signed up, as were Hell's Angels, MPs wearing yellow ribbons and ministers meeting deputations. It was as if a missing child were this year's Make Poverty History campaign.   Madeleine has become Maddy, an angel face in the clutches of a monster. The reasonable attempts of the McCanns to avoid publicity and be seen to cooperate with the much-battered Portuguese police were as broken sticks in a tornado of coverage. No aspect of the case was left intact by invading armies of counsellors, paediatricians, psychologists, criminologists and trauma consultants. "Every parent's nightmare" became the nation's nightmare. Families closed their doors to the world, hugged their children close and cursed Portugal.   To suggest that this might not be a good way of finding a missing child is clearly spitting in the wind. It is possible that publicity in the McCann case might have induced witnesses to come forward in the immediate aftermath of the girl's disappearance. It is equally possible that media hysteria could drive a cornered criminal to desperate measures to cover his or her tracks. Is it worth the risk?   There were 798 child abductions in Britain in the last period for which figures are available (2003-4), of which most were intra-family but 68 were "by strangers". Of these, a majority were quickly and quietly resolved, by information being available and acted on before the captor realised. Twenty-five of them took longer, in addition to dozens from preceding years. Since the disappearance of Madeleine on May 3, another 450 young people have gone missing in Britain. While many are teenagers, none has received anything like the attention given to the McCanns.   So what made this case so special as to merit the trans-shipment of Fleet Street's finest and the BBC's chief news-reader? The answer is that a "big news story" is not a systematic concept. It does not emerge onto the page according to some calculus of merit, as satirically suggested by Michael Frayn in his novel, Towards the End of Morning. It does not claim its place on the front page via a table stipulating five dead Englishmen (or one Londoner), 50 dead Europeans and 1,000 dead Chinese.   To acquire front page status a story must compete with dozens of similar human interest stories on a particular day, boosted by happenings over the light news period such as a bank holiday. Hence the phenomenon that alsatians only attack children at Easter and there is a "road carnage horror" every Christmas, though statistics on both are constant through the year. The story should relate the ordinary lives of readers, as did the Soham murders, but not the deaths of the Morecambe Bay Chinese cockle pickers. It must contain tears, suspense and mystery.   Such features are not cynical or strange. A newspaper story strives to attain the quality of a novel, if only because it knows that readers like novels, as television viewers like soap operas. The human imagination is attuned to narratives that have beginnings, middles and ends, preferably ends that carry some moral message. Under this pressure what is extraordinary is not that newspapers sometimes make things up (and get them wrong) but that they make so little up.   The McCann story ticked all these boxes. It was not another runaway teenager or the death abroad of another "promising gap-year student". It was a heartbreaking and open-ended mystery. Any parent could relate to it. Any reader could, by expressing sympathy and showing vigilance, participate in relieving pain and possibly solving the case. This might involve intrusion into private grief and blatant xenophobia, but that is hardly a media novelty. Britons travelling abroad seem to feel entitled to the same consideration by the authorities as they would get at home, and journalists feed that unreasonable expectation.   I have found the coverage of the McCann story prurient and tedious beyond belief. That the BBC should regard it as more important than Brown's ascension to national leadership crumbles my faith in that great organisation. Tabloid values have come to British public service broadcasting with a vengeance and without even the commercial pressure of the private sector. It is like the daily attention given to the kidnapping of the BBC's brave Gaza correspondent, Alan Johnston, when dozens of other kidnappings, including of journalists, go unreported.   In this spirit I must constantly remind myself that the British media does not do responsibility. It does stories. And stories tell better when they are about individuals, not collectives. The media is unconcerned with what people like me find decorous or important. It kicks down doors and exposes the hidden corners of the human condition. It fights competition, plays dirty and disobeys the rules. There is nothing it finds too vulgar or too prurient for its wandering, penetrating lens.   Journalists may have cooked the McCann story to a burnt crisp. But they cook many other stories that way and I say, thank goodness. There are plenty in power who feel too much was written and said on the Royal Navy hostages, on cash-for-honours, on BAE sleaze and on David Kelly. Tough luck on them.   Damilola Taylor was just one among many youngsters whose lives are ruined or lost on Britain's sink housing estates, conditions highlighted by the extraordinary publicity attached to his case. Many brave people are killed for trying to impose order on Britain's streets, but it was the teacher, Philip Lawrence, who captured the public's imagination. Sometimes there is no better way to alert the nation to street violence, racism or even the dangers faced by families abroad than through the tragedy visited on an individual victim.   The British press plays hard cop to the soft cop of the British constitution. It goes where politics dares not tread, certainly the present pusillanimous parliament that still cannot find a way of holding the government to account for Iraq, as congress is finally doing in America. The press does not operate with any sense of proportion, judgment or self-restraint because it is selling stories, not running the country. The unshackled and irresponsible press sometimes gets it wrong. But I still prefer it, warts and all, to a shackled and responsible one.

'Maddie' and the media in Britain AD (After Diana), 24 May 2007

'Maddie' and the media in Britain AD (After Diana) Spiked   The three-week emotional outpouring around the missing Madeleine McCann has laid bare much about British culture today.   Mick Hume  Thursday 24 May 2007    Last week I wrote here about why everybody seemed to be 'Missing "Our Maddie"', and questioned whether that outpouring of public emotionalism was a healthy response to somebody else's tragedy. Normally I would only write a spiked column touching on the same issue two weeks running when there is a war on, or at least an election campaign. But these are not normal times.   Over the past three weeks, the campaign and media coverage around the missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann has continued to seize the public imagination in a way that politics in Britain never does these days. And it has also apparently done what wars cannot any more, by uniting the nation behind a cause.   Few want to question the response to Madeleine's disappearance, since we are talking about an innocent little girl. Yet, despite my suggestion that we should shut up about 'Our Maddie', there is a need to keep questioning the reasons behind this phenomenon, and what it reveals about the British state of mind. The campaign for 'Our Maddie' may indeed be well-intentioned; but it has come to look like an increasingly morbid symptom of a society that is missing something other than a little girl.   Inevitably, raising these issues means you get accused of downplaying the horror of child abduction. We have all been touched by the McCann's tragedy, sympathised with the devastated family and, if we are parents, even allowed ourselves to think for a moment what it would be like if our child went missing. I hope that she is found safe (whilst recognising that history suggests this is increasingly unlikely as time passes) and that those responsible are brought to account.   But over the past three weeks, the reactions to this case have gone far beyond such personal feelings of basic human solidarity. Indeed, it has become clear that there are not one but two little girls involved here. There is Madeleine McCann, at the centre of a secretive investigation in Portugal. And then there is 'Our Maddie', a photographic image of a blonde girl with a name made up by the media, at the centre of a publicity circus over here.   As time goes on it increasingly seems that the UK media coverage of Maddie has had little connection with the progress of the case itself. Indeed it has often appeared that while the police investigation has been stalling, the media campaign over here has been revving up, as if the less that has been happening, the more coverage it has attracted.   During the first two weeks after Madeleine disappeared, there was little of substance to report from the Algarve on most days. Yet as the Sky News correspondent in the Algarve wrote in his blog, the story topped news bulletins every day bar one - only pushed slightly down the schedule once, by prime minister Tony Blair announcing his resignation date.   Last Sunday night on ITV News was a study in making headlines out of the fact that nothing was happening. The only development was that Madeleine's father was flying home for an overnight visit. To record these events, ITV News had two 'live' reporters - one standing in Portugal to tell us that the plane would be taking off 'any minute', the other sent to near the McCann's home in Leicestershire to report that this was where he would be travelling to.   Then, Monday's Daily Mirror covered its front page with a splash reporting 'a minute's silence to remember Madeleine and pray for her safe return'. The source of this important news? An anonymous e-mail, calling for a minute 'to raise consciousness about the disappearance', as if raising consciousness any higher were possible.   Now we even have articles speculating on what will happen when the case drops out of the news, and a sort of grim contest to find new angles to keep it in the headlines and keep the emotional temper high - from stories about Madeleine's baby siblings kissing her image on TV, to front-page 'exclusives' about the BBC soap opera, EastEnders, pulling a summer storyline (ie, not to be broadcast for some time) involving a baby being snatched. None of it is news, but it all offers excuses for more 'Maddie' front pages, so back into the emotional maelstrom we all must go.   Some have put this remarkable blanket coverage down to the media savvy of 'Team McCann', the family members and advisers supporting Madeleine's parents. No doubt they are well-organised and persistent professional people who have done everything they can to keep the case in the news, and nobody can blame parents for that. The question is, however, why has the media been so willing to give in to their efforts and tried so hard to put itself in their shoes? After all, the British media is not known for its soft-heartedness. Nor can it have much to do with helping the investigation - the constant calls for more/any information from people in Britain seems more likely to lead to wild goose chases and confusion.   But it is always too easy just to scapegoat 'the meejah'. Media bosses will say that they have only been giving their readers and viewers what they want - as reflected in high viewing figures for anything Maddie-related and positive feedback. Nor did the mainstream media somehow order millions of people to visit the Madeleine website set up by the family campaign. The media has willingly provided the ring for the public circus. But it has been reflecting - and reinforcing - wider, powerful trends that exist across contemporary UK society.   Here are a few of the features of our culture that have been laid bare these past three weeks:   Britain AD - After Diana. It is over a decade now since I coined the phrase 'mourning sickness' to describe the rising fashion for ostentatious public displays of grief and ersatz emotion in response to celebrity deaths. It was a trend that became obvious to all in the huge response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.   Many have since tried to claim that mass emotional outburst was a national 'moment of madness'. But the current mawkish response to the disappearance of a little girl shows that, if anything, the same attitudes are now more deeply embedded in the public psyche and more readily brought to the surface. It has been an outbreak of a sort of pre-mourning sickness, before we even know whether or not she is still alive.   Sharing suffering has become one of the few ways that people feel able to come together in an atomised society. The emotionalism around 'Our Maddie' has displayed many of the new rituals people perform to make a public show that they care and are sharing the pain - the flowers, the wristbands, the ribbons, the online messages. When the news reported that the McCanns were visiting a 'holy site' this week, I thought for a moment that they were coming home to see the pile of these memorials near their home; it turned out to be a Catholic shrine in Portugal.   I have been reminded again of something Oliver James, the popular psychologist, said about the reactions to Diana's death in one of his wiser moments: that the sincerity of the public's emotions was not in doubt, but their authenticity was. In other words, these are not fake tears, people are not putting it on. But nor can public shows of concern for strangers or celebrities be compared to genuine grief. There is something else going on.   In the same way, something else has driven so many people to make a public display of their private fears and feelings over the little girl they have never met. This is close to emotional exhibitionism. It is clearly more about searching for ourselves over here than helping to find her over there. Sadly, this is how many people feel that they can express themselves, and find themselves part of something bigger, in Britain AD - After Diana.   The football factor. The high profile of football and footballers in the campaign around 'Our Maddie' should come as no surprise. There were the early fan-made 'Our Maddie' banners at Everton (after we all saw the pictures of her in an Everton shirt), the messages from Premiership players and David Beckham asking for her return, the unprecedented two minute film about her shown at Wembley before the FA Cup final, and then the Liverpool team posing with a 'Bring Maddie Home' banner on the way to Athens for the Champions League final.   Football has become the nearest thing to a modern-day church for many in our secular society. Where do people come together in large numbers to show their respects or bow their heads these days? At football grounds, where a minute's silence (or even a minute's applause) before kick-off has become a regular feature of match-day.  To have some campaign linked with football has become a sign that we take it seriously.   This is one sign of the way that the status of football has been inflated in recent years to fill the gap where our society's deflated, flat public and political life ought to be. So when the campaign for Maddie became a focus for people to make a public display of common feeling, it was straying onto football's new home ground. Indeed, those posters for Madeleine often occupy the same windows and make the same statement as England football flags might - an expression of the wish to belong, to be part of an emotional collective.   Some might think it better for people to come together and share feelings around something serious like a lost child rather than something as frivolous as football. But there is surely nothing positive about turning child abduction into a national spectator sport and an emotional football to be used for other purposes.   Misery media. The furore surrounding the McCann case has confirmed the central role of the media in society today. It has become the only platform for public debate and discussion. The way that this one case has suddenly been elevated into a media-managed national obsession shows that we have reached the point where, if an event is not reported, it effectively did not happen; but if it captures the media's attention, it can be the only story in town.   Yet the coverage following Madeleine's disappearance also reveals the weakness of the news media today. Lacking a clear sense of its own mission, and feeling as isolated as every other institution, the media seizes upon a case like this as a chance to connect with the audience. As that same Sky correspondent's blog put it, journalists generally are 'not very popular in certain quarters, and en masse we can even seem like vultures'. But over the McCann case, things are different: 'members of the public keep telling us what a great job we are doing'. He concludes with satisfaction that 'we as journalists had moved beyond reporting to performing a public service'.   But what are the consequences of this shift for news reporting? It means that reporters become concerned not just with reporting the news but with making it - pointing the finger at suspects, and generally doing whatever they can to keep the national emotional rally going. It means journalists putting themselves and their feelings at the moral centre of the story, which inevitably leads to telling us how we should be feeling. At worst, we can end up with a sort of news version of the misery memoirs that top the best-sellers lists, wallowing in the trauma of it all. It is pretty base voyeurism, yet it is seen as a 'good thing' because it keeps Maddie in the news.   The lonely planet of politics. Last week, when members of the McCann family visited Parliament, a lot of MPs wore those yellow ribbons for Madeleine; some senior politicians were reportedly spotted ducking out of the debating chamber to get one when they saw how popular they had become. They were criticised in a few places for this cheap stunt, even accused of pandering to the sentiment of 'the mob'.   But they weren't really pretending, either. Politicians are at least as lost as anybody else in our society today, bereft of any clear sense of mission or purpose. In an age without real political parties or social movements, politicians do these things out of a genuine sense of desperation to be connecting with some sort of widespread public sentiment. That is why they will hitch their horse to any passing wagon unquestioningly.   Even Gordon Brown, prime minister (non-)elect declared that he would do anything he could to help the campaign. Family members reported that he was tearful when they met him. As a father, that is entirely understandable. But as a PM, we could do with a more clear-eyed vision of where the country is heading.   In sum, the outpouring of emotionalism around Our Maddie reveals that many of us seem to have lost something other than a little girl: a sense of where to draw the line between the private and the public, between feelings and facts, between genuine grief and pseudo-suffering; a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves, so that many will seize upon any opportunity to indulge in collective emoting; a sense of how to report the news, or how to lead the country.   It is important to stand back and take stock before emotional exhibitionism and voyeurism towards victims become defining features of 'Britishness' today. Mick Hume is spiked's editor-at-large.

For Madeleine's sake, beware the juggernaut of publicity, 31 May 2007

For Madeleine's sake, beware the juggernaut of publicity Daily Mail   Amanda Platell Last updated at 18:14 31 May 2007   This is a piece that is almost impossible to write.   It is an almost unutterable message to Kate and Gerry McCann, but I feel I must say it before it is too late: "Please, please, for your own sake and the sake of your missing daughter Madeleine, step off this speeding juggernaut of publicity for just a second. Be still for one moment and think about what you are doing, about where you go next."   I realise that just writing those words leaves me open to howls of protest, to accusations of callousness and insensitivity.   What mother or father in their situation could think of anything but getting their child back? Who could pause when every second might make the difference? But hear me out.   Like millions of people, each night my first prayer is for Madeleine's safe return. My second is for Kate and Gerry McCann, to give them the strength to endure the horror that has befallen them.   Any parent would move heaven and earth to try to find their missing child. If that means shouting Madeleine's name in every corner of the globe, then the McCanns have made it plain they will do so.   To that end, they have helped orchestrate a publicity campaign to keep their daughter's face in the forefront of the public's mind, to maximise public support.   And herein lies the danger. For I cannot help but question whether a new heart-rending, eye-catching initiative day after day is the right way to go about things.   Especially when it means exposing even the most intimate moments of family despair. Moments like the one on Tuesday night, when they kissed goodbye to their two-year-old twins, Amelie and Sean, before flying off for their audience with the Pope.   Not for one second do I doubt their motives - and Pope Benedict's support is both moving and laudable. All the McCanns want is to get Madeleine back, whatever it takes, however long it takes. And yet, and yet...   Let me be clear: I do not agree with those - and there are a surprising number - who blame the McCanns for leaving their three children alone in that apartment in the first place.   As Gerry McCann said, no one will ever blame them more than they blame themselves. What use is blame now anyway? Blame won?t get Madeleine back.   But I do feel that the McCann's sustained public agony is so intense it is becoming almost unwatchable - thereby destroying its very purpose.   None of us can imagine the full extent of the torment they are going through, day after day, as hope grows dimmer and desperation fades toward grief.   But this I do know: the McCanns cannot be in a fit state to make rational judgements about what they are being asked to do. If someone told them that cutting off their arms would bring Madeleine back, they'd do it.   And I do wonder about the people who are advising them.   As the former Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short once remarked during coverage of famines in Africa, there is such a thing as compassion fatigue: the point at which the suffering is so great, people can no longer watch it, let alone respond to it.   "Despondency paralyses the will to action," she said, and that is as true of the missing Madeleine as it is of the starving millions.   Having spoken to Scotland Yard experts on child abduction days after Madeleine went missing, I am well aware that in the beginning, it was crucial to keep her face on television and in newspapers.   The courage it took for the McCanns to do that is unimaginable and I have nothing but the deepest admiration for them.   Even their language in the first press conferences, saying how much Madeleine needed them and they needed Madeleine, was bravely scripted to try to trigger the response in her kidnapper to let her go.   Then to have to trawl through pictures and video footage of their daughter to find the images that might jolt a witness's memory - a fresh picture every day - must have been utterly heartbreaking.   But then the Madeleine bandwagon began to roll and other people started falling over themselves to leap aboard.   It's one thing for the pop group Simple Minds to allow their hit single Don't You Forget About Me to be played at football grounds to raise awareness in the first days after Madeleine's disappearance.   But when I heard two weeks later that Bryan Adams was considering allowing the re-release of his 1991 single, Everything I Do (I Do It For You) to help continue the campaign, I found myself wondering: was this good for Madeleine, or good for Mr Adams's fading career?   And whereas I have no doubt whatsoever about Gordon Brown's motives - he of all people would understand the searing pain of losing a daughter - his much-publicised personal intervention leaves him open to charges at worst of political opportunism and at best of clumsiness.   I hesitate to use such a phrase, but it seems, at times, as if we are witnessing "competitive grieving", with the McCanns' private agony becoming a public sport.   It's not that Madeleine does not deserve special attention. Indeed, I wish every child who goes missing - hundreds in Britain and Europe every year, thousands in Africa and Asia - got that special treatment.   No, the real problem now for the McCanns is that the public at large will grow weary of these orchestrated photo opportunities, and cynical about the parade of well-meaning celebrities who have offered their support. And then what?   Only yesterday I saw a group of women gossiping over the papers when one saw the headline about Kate McCann's trip to see the Pope.   It read: "I have never left my twins before." The woman threw the newspaper down and said "If only that were true" - clearly referring to the night Madeleine went missing.   One of her friends said she found the pictures of Kate and Gerry tearfully hugging the twins farewell in the full glare of the cameras disconcerting.   "Is nothing private any more?" she asked. "Will it be a spread in Hello! next?"   Callous, certainly, but also a reflection of how the public's sympathy cannot be taken for granted: the weight of the tragedy is beginning to become unbearable to all those people who have, until now, joined in the prayers and the yearning for Madeleine?s story to have a happy ending.   How will people react, I wonder, to the news that after yesterday's trip to the Vatican, the McCanns will embark on a highly public trip around Europe?   Once again, I understand why they feel they must keep Madeleine in the headlines, but they have to keep the public with them, too. And unfortunately they cannot do that by increasingly desperate and occasionally voyeuristic coverage of their pain.   Look again at the pictures of Kate and Gerry with the Pope: they appear beyond exhaustion, so frail and stretched with suffering they seem ready to snap.   Surely they need to take stock, to preserve their sanity, if not for their own sakes then for the sake of two adorable children who remain their most precious hope of happiness in these dark and desperate weeks.

I really, 17 June 2007

I really Sunday Mirror (no online link available)   Anna Smith 17/06/2007   I REALLY hope the McCanns are not serious about considering paying criminals to help in the hunt for little Madeleine. While there's oceans of goodwill out there for Gerry and Kate, there will be just as many hoodlums who'll fleece them.

Shame on Alex the rant, 15 July 2007

Shame on Alex the rant Sunday Mirror (no online link available)   Anna Smith 15/07/2007   C4 NEWS' Alex Thomson should be ashamed of himself for his rant about the McCanns, saying they are milking the media and criticising them for not being there when little Madeleine was snatched.   Just what did this jumped-up newsman think he'd gain by stuff like that? Does he not think that Gerry and Kate McCann lie awake every night racked with guilt? If I was a boss at C4, I'd regard his judgment as poor and mark his card.

Asking Questions of the McCann Media Machine, 06 August 2007

Asking Questions of the McCann Media Machine allmediaSCOTLAND.com   Maggie Stanfield 06/08/2007   What did we in the media feel when we heard that Madeleine McCann had gone missing? If we're parents and if we're totally honest, we could admit to certain not very admirable emotions: What kind of parents were they to let that happen? Why weren't those children being properly looked after?  And finally, with just a touch of relief, thank God it wasn't my child. When she disappeared in Portugal, parents everywhere suddenly improved their child security. In the immediate resort, children were being clung onto with an enthusiasm not seen since the day and hour of each birth. Throughout the world, shocked mothers and fathers were shaken into a sudden guilty assessment of how lax their procedures had become. Madeline was on the lips and in the minds of every mother and toddler group attendee; every church and community centre; every branch of John Lewis and Tesco. The massive publicity campaign machine and its growing staff handling media and public relations seemed to run like a well oiled machine. Agonising cutaways of the distraught parents vied with sterile-suited Portuguese forensic experts. The appeal for 'legal expenses' was launched and rapidly raised vast but undisclosed amounts though quite what legal expenses would be involved in searching for a child and eventually, possibly finding both her and her kidnapper, has yet to be made clear. People gave generously, wanting to play some kind of active role in helping to search for the little blond, blue-eyed girl with whose face we all became so familiar. The official website just tells us that 'any extra' will be devoted to finding other lost children. Parents in Scotland were relieved they hadn't been victims as the McCanns were but they wanted to help as best they could. Just as many handed out flyers, mounted photographs, more than five million people visited the website (www.findmadeleine.com) in its first 24 hours, forwarded emails, others put up generous amounts of cash. Others – not very many, but some – were less honourable. There was the Staffordshire woman who was found guilty on two charges of theft as a result of her falsely claiming she was collecting for Madeleine and there were stories of web hijackers trying to siphon off financial gifts. While we in the media on every platform related the latest events in the investigation, at times highlighting perceived failures of officialdom, the McCanns continued their well orchestrated campaign, visiting everyone from the Vatican to Capitol Hill, although not always being met by heads of state. At no point to date has the media anywhere managed to get answers to some of the more difficult questions like: Where is the money going? Was the door actually locked in the bedroom? If so, surely this would have been a fire risk? If not, then you must have known the children were not completely secure? Why didn't you get a baby sitter to stay with the three children? Could you see into the room from where you were sitting? Exactly how long had you been away from the room when you returned to find Maddy gone? Out of sympathy for the anguished parents, the media has held back but where some have tried to ask these kinds of questions, they have been very rapidly and firmly faced down. They clearly are not going to be answered. The result is that seeds of suspicion have been inadvertently sown. Every politician knows that the refusal to answer a questions or to respond with a 'no comment' is almost always taken as some sort of admission of guilt. Media machine McCann needs to be aware of this and to return some credibility to its cause by setting out clear, accountable answers to some of these painful but valid questions. If media interest is to be sustained, if the world is not to forget Madeleine McCann along with thousands of other missing children, then the campaigners need to accept that the difficult questions won't go away and need to be answered. As any PR will tell you, a media campaign is a two-way process. If you refuse to get the media on board, their interest very rapidly lags. The McCanns need the media buy-in. Yes, they have had it for a couple of months on their own terms but if they are to continue with their search, they will need to recognise that this is a reciprocal relationship.

The hunt for information, 09 August 2007

Mark Williams-Thomas The hunt for information Guardian   Amid all the speculation, it is hard to know what to believe about Madeleine McCann's disappearance - and Portuguese secrecy laws don't help matters.   August 09, 2007 12:00PM Mark Williams-Thomas     There is so much speculation around it is difficult to know what can and can't be believed. Was Madeline McCann abducted or did she die in her bedroom? Was it a tragic accident or a deliberate act? Do Gerry and Kate McCann or one of the family friends know more that they are telling?   What is clear is that there is more speculation now than ever, after a three-way war has broken out between the British and Portuguese media and the Portuguese police, with Gerry and Kate at the centre of it.   But why has such a war started? One answer is because of the Portuguese legal system and the information vacuum from the police, with details of the investigation remaining unknown because of strict Portuguese laws designed to keep police work secret. The secrecy law that prevents information being shared applies not only to police, but to anyone involved in the investigation.   Under the law of judicial secrecy anyone who releases details of a police investigation while it is still under way could face criminal procedures. In practice, the law has prevented the police from making appeals, or confirming or denying speculation surrounding Madeleine's disappearance. It also prevents Gerry and Kate from speaking out.   For me, the secrecy law presents serious concerns about the Portuguese police's ability to undertake such a complex inquiry. It is this specific law that creates the problem, providing no opportunity to appeal for information from the public, to release a description of what Madeleine was wearing on the night she disappeared, and saying what time she disappeared, for example. In relation to the secrecy law I have sympathy for the Portuguese police, as this is what they have to work within - but it needs changing urgently.   This week we have seen a reinvigorated investigation, which for many weeks has limped along, apparently rudderless, lacking focus and direction. On Saturday, as a result of a review by British detectives, we saw Robert Murat's house re-searched, presumably looking for evidence - evidence that was potentially never secured when the police first searched the address. The house and grounds and vehicles were all searched in less than eight hours. If Robert Murat did have evidence at his address was it really likely to be there 11 weeks after the first search?   We also saw Mrs Murat driving her vehicle to the police station in order for them to search it. Why? If the vehicle contained potential evidence the police should have gone and seized it.   Then the most amazing evidence emerged on Monday that blood has been found in the bedroom that Madeleine was sleeping in. Thirteen weeks after Madeleine disappeared and after the apartment had been thoroughly forensically examined (or so we are told), cleaned and re-let - the police find an area of blood that is apparently invisible to the naked eye. This evidence could be vital, although as of yet we do not know if it belongs to Madeleine and are probably unlikely to know this for another week at the earliest.   Whoever the blood belongs to, why was it missed in the initial forensic examination? What else have the police missed or failed to investigate thoroughly?   With new focus to the police inquiry I would expect to see further development over the forthcoming days - in the build up to the 100-day mark. I also anticipate that there will be more pressure on Gerry and Kate McCann by the Portuguese media, more speculation and more rumours. Whatever the situation, the Portuguese police need to act now, to put a stop to the leaks and enable the investigation to be focused on one thing: finding Madeline.

Say a Praia for Maddy, 19 August 2007

Say a Praia for Maddy Sunday Mirror   Anna Smith 19/08/2007   FROM the moment Madeleine went missing, you got the impression the Portuguese police couldn't find their backsides in the dark.   Just look at that little police chief in the cheap suit who popped up at the first shambolic press conference. You just knew they were so far out of their depth it made your heart sink.   Clueless. Completely clueless. From the time it took them to bring in sniffer dogs and block roads, right up to a few days ago, when suddenly blood was found on the apartment where the little girl was abducted as she slept.   It was nearly 100 days into the investigation, for God's sake. How come forensics or anyone else searching the apartment never found blood before?   It's bad enough that they don't know what they're doing. But what really sickens me is the way the police, the Portuguese press and others have turned on poor Gerry and Kate McCann.   It's disgusting. And from a country that has children and the family at the core of its society, it's even worse.   I cannot imagine what every gut-wrenching day must feel like for the McCanns without Madeleine. Their last thought at night but must be about her and their first, as they open their eyes in the morning.   And yet we still have these Portuguese newspapers being drip-fed by police insiders trying to point the finger. Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming the Portuguese police for not finding Madeleine.   Any small town anywhere in the world would be out of their depth with a kidnapping. Any small police station, not used to major inquiries, would not even know where to start.   And even if they did know, and had started the investigation with more gusto, perhaps they would still never have found Madeleine.   But their turning on the McCanns stinks. It's all about the main agenda - the tourist trade. This kidnapping has gone global, and they, and Portugal, are in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. At the end of the day, nothing is more important than money. I was talking to a wealthy Irish golfer the other day, who has a house in Praia de Luz. When he mentioned it was in the place Madeleine went missing, I expected him to be sympathetic to the family. But you know what he said? It's ruining the whole place for everyone.   It used to be a great place out there with the golf, he lamented, but now the missing girl is all everyone talks about. Unbelievable. But, sadly, that mindset is out there. And not just among people like him. I would bet the cops and the authorities will be glad to see the back of the McCanns.   In fact they can't even wait until the heartbroken couple find the strength to go home without their precious little girl.   They know their insidious little leaked stories to the press will drive those poor parents out.   The latest casts a shadow over the McCanns' friends, and there's the spin that Madeleine was thrown into the sea the night she was abducted.   That clears it up nicely for them. If it's true, they'll be hoping she washes up far away from their shores.   Yes. The McCanns will have to come home. Praia de Luz is tired of their tragedy. And for me, the idyllic little fishing town will always be remembered for that shame.

Madeleine and the media, 21 August 2007

Madeleine and the media BBC News (Newsnight)   At the Edinburgh television festival this week, Kirsty Wark will interview the father of missing toddler Madeleine McCann.   In an article for the BBC's staff magazine, Ariel, she discusses the questions posed by the media's reaction to Madeleine's disappearance.   By Kirsty Wark Presenter, BBC Newsnight Last Updated: Tuesday, 21 August 2007, 18:18 GMT 19:18 UK   It has become the picture that nobody tears down, Madeleine McCann's angelic face on posters downloaded and printed by people all over the world and stuck up in supermarkets, train stations, on airport jetties and in cinema foyers.   The picture is emblazoned across Jonny Wilkinson's jersey, on Premier League team strips, and on Ewan MacGregor's bike. Madeleine McCann is everywhere, and nowhere.   I can't think of any other story, so prominent for so long, where there are so few facts.   TV reporters have done thousands of pieces to camera eeking out the few reliable details, newspapers have contained screeds about the McCanns whose faces are as well known as many celebrities.   The last time I typed their daughter's name on Google it offered up more than two million pages.   Sustaining interest   The McCann campaign has been unprecedented and we, the media, have been willing participants. If you were in the McCanns' position I am sure you too would do everything in your power, and seize every opportunity to keep the story on the screen, online and on 24 hour TV.   But how did they achieve such blanket - and on TV at least - such uncritical coverage when hundreds of children disappear every year?   Was it because the family and their close circle of friends knew how to create massive and sustained interest that had a fleet of satellite trucks racing to the Algarve, or was there something about this little girl's disappearance that triggered a kind of collective sensation akin to the death of Princess Diana, and an international conversation point on blogs and chatrooms? Or perhaps both?   There is also the fact that the McCanns are telegenic and articulate - and are doctors, and therefore regarded as respectable members of society.   The broadcasters did not keep their distance. The BBC helped to organise the original televised statement which was pooled to British and Portuguese television stations, probably in the absence of any input from the Portuguese police whose rules and operational methods are different from what we are used to.   And early on, on 10 May, the controller of News 24, Kevin Bakhurst, wrote in his blog:   "We will continue to try to provide the high volume of coverage and updates that the audience wants while respecting the family's privacy and needs and while striving to separate real developments from rumour."   Media 'events'   Since then there have been few real developments, so the McCanns in partnership with the media have staged a number of "events," the most famous being their meeting with the Pope.   There have been regular photo opportunities, high profile supporters and recently a series of interviews.   Even when the coverage has not gone their way I suspect that they will consider it of little importance in comparison with the importance of keeping Madeleine's face on the front page.   They are incredibly well plugged into the media, and have a campaign organiser, a media advisor who is the godparent of one of their children and a former lecturer in new media, and a roster of loyal friends who give their time, energy and expertise.   They all think laterally about how to produce a new angle on the story. In that way they remind me of the producers on Newsnight, and it's been that way from the beginning.   Direct action   The morning after Madeleine's disappearance I was on my way to London to the programme, and at home in Glasgow, a neighbour whom we'd never met rang the bell.   She was one of Kate McCann's closest friends and she was very upset. She told my husband that Madeleine had disappeared and Kate and Gerry were frantic because the police had been slow off the mark.   They were desperate to get the story out and could I help? In fact the disappearance soon began running on all the outlets.   That kind of direct action has been a hallmark of the campaign. Creating a publicity engine and keeping the momentum up has given the McCanns a positive focus, and was achieved by them and their family and friends through an enormous amount of self discipline.   Has this tragic story created a "blueprint" for families who find themselves in similar terrible situations, or was there something unique to the McCanns?   We in the media should ask ourselves whether we would react the same way again, and again because the sad truth is that it will happen sooner rather than later.

What the papers say..., 29 August 2007

Michael White What the papers say... Guardian   The British press has been scathing about the Portuguese media's treatment of the McCanns, but Fleet Street's own track record isn't exactly glowing.   August 29, 2007 11:34AM Michael White     You may not have spotted it, but some of today's newspapers report that Gerry McCann, father of missing Madeleine, "stormed" out of a Spanish television studio after being persistently asked for detailed answers on the case which Portuguese law prevents him from divulging.   Kate McCann stayed on the set and explained "it's the pressure" and her husband came back and apologised after a five-minute break. Sounds fair enough to me. But what is striking - yet again - is the way the papers report this sort of incident as if it's nothing to do with them.   Before he walked Dr McCann had been asked to confirm that the couple had been the "last people to see Madeleine alive". Something may have been lost in translation here, but that sounds like a pretty leading question given the way speculation has developed on the case.   "Everything we read in the press is inaccurate or untrue. We would like to talk, but we cannot talk," Mrs McCann - also a medic - told the Telecinco channel during the interview.   Well, yes, that must be true of a lot of the acreage of "Maddy" coverage during the McCanns' 120-day ordeal. Rightly or wrongly, certainly understandably, they have tried to ride the media tiger, hoping that relentless publicity might help rescue their little girl.   The policy seems to have failed, as was probably the case from the start. You can see why they tried, even visiting the Pope, a funny sort of gesture given the papacy's record on child protection. But it appeared to give the McCanns some solace in their misery.   But back to the papers. Last week the Daily Express devoted a full page to the deplorable allegations made in the Portuguese media. They range from wife-swapping holidays in Praia da Luz, to drunkenness, inattention, doped kids and heavy hints that, perhaps, the McCanns or their friends might in some way be responsible for Madeleine's disappearance and presumed death. Oh yes, and Gerry McCann wasn't her real father anyway, but doctored the birth certificate as doctors can.   I suppose it's a comfort to be reminded that, contrary to some high-minded liberal thought, ours isn't a uniquely dreadful media. When Paris Match airbrushed Sarko's flabby tummy in the latest Action President shots in a canoe the other day (the proprietor is a chum) most of us were on the side of the flab. Ditto ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's dyed hair which got a German news agency into trouble. I've seen it up close and it looked dyed to me. So what?   But the idea that poor Dr McCann is stressed out solely because of the nasty things those dreadful Portuguese papers have been saying seems a bit rich. Fleet St hasn't exactly confined its reporting, analysis and comment to the rigorous rules imposed by Portuguese law.   In the process it has been pretty rude about the local coppers as well as the local media, neither of which had much previous experience of this kind of kidnap or the Fleet St posse in action. It's quite a sight.   But self-detachment is standard practice for newspapers in a crisis; the tabloids are worse, but not too much worse. In everything from Wayne Rooney's love life (deplorable conduct by Merseyside police in cahoots with the tabs there) to Tony Blair's loans-for-no-peerages affair, it's nothing to do with us, guv'nor. We just happened to be in the vicinity. We'll have a lot more of this before the weekend's latest Diana Fest is over. At least the McCanns' sorrow has spared her memory a few tacky front-page headlines in the Express.   The latest example is Formula 1's Lewis Hamilton, the best thing that's happened to Britain's standing in a world sport for some time. Build 'em up, knock 'em down, woe betide that young man if he doesn't win the title this season (at his first attempt).   At the weekend he said he might be moving to Switzerland to shake off media hassle and snappers jumping out from behind every litter bin. He can handle the cars, it's the coverage he can't manage, so he said. We're entitled to take that with a pinch of salt. Perhaps tax status is part of the calculation, perhaps he'll get used to the hype. But don't bank on it. Remember, Brazilian football coach, Phil Scolari, used the same justification to turn down the England job when Sven finally resigned. It would have meant moving from Portugal. And that was before the McCann story brought the pack to Praia da Luz.