The case of missing Madeleine McCann has taken another dramatic twist with the naming of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, as formal suspects. The development has brought shock and confusion to press and public alike and now, whatever the outcome, a price will have to be paid.
Until 6 September the human interest story of the summer, so beloved by the tabloids, was getting less and less coverage. The three-year old who went missing from the family’s holiday villa in Portugal on 3 May was the subject of an unprecedented campaign created by her parents. Massive media interest and public sympathy as a result meant hundreds of thousands of pounds donated to the Find Madeleine (Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd) fund. Car windows, local shops, national supermarkets, international airports and the mass media were enlisted at every opportunity, issuing appeals and using striking ‘Find Maddie’ posters. The new British Prime Minister and even Pope Benedict XVI publicly offered their consolation and messages of hope to the McCanns.
In many ways the story was made for the British press: small defenceless blonde child of hard-working respectable British parents goes missing in foreign location, with the shadowy suggestion of a paedophile attack. Horror and heartstrings sell papers, so we were bombarded with pictures of ‘Maddie’ and offers of thousands of pounds in reward for information.
Recent events, however, have changed the tone. The outpouring of sympathy and good will towards the McCanns is now suddenly replaced by a more circumspect approach. Kay Burley of Sky News quickly replaced her emotional and somewhat obnoxious ‘find missing Maddie’ epithet with a rather more foreboding ‘missing Madeleine McCann case.’
Since the 12-hour questioning of Kate McCann and subsequent announcement of both parents as ‘arguidos’ or formal suspects, the reaction of the media has changed from vote of sympathy to outright feeding frenzy. Massive mobs of reporters have camped outside the respective McCann residences in the resort town of Praia da Luz and the McCann’s home town of Rothley, Leicestershire. The McCanns, for their part have described the situation as “surreal, unbearable…an unending nightmare.”
To date Portuguese ‘sources’ have revealed that tests on DNA material allegedly found in the McCann hire-car have tested an 88% positive match for Madeleine. And amid repeated speculation, the BBC learned yesterday that the Portuguese police indeed got hold of a laptop belonging to Gerry McCann, and ‘a copy’ of Kate McCann’s diary. The Portuguese prosecutor based in Portimao has now handed a dossier of evidence to a judge who reportedly has 10 days to consider whether to bring a case.
The few confirmed developments have fuelled wild speculation in the press. Theories include the idea that the body was dumped by the parents after Madeleine was given an overdose of sleeping pills which killed her, accidentally or otherwise. Another postulation suggests that the Portuguese police bungled the forensic collection of the DNA material from the car, somehow cross-contaminating the vehicle from material they had collected previously. Some Portuguese newspapers have been reporting on the quality of parenting Madeleine may have received, alleging that Kate McCann seems ‘cold’ and that her diary contained passages where she described how ‘hyperactive’ her children were in the events leading up to the disappearance.
Few offices and pub conversations can have escaped the morbid fascination as we argue for and against the people in the middle of all of this. Jonathan Freedland described the widespread moral confusion in Wednesday’s Guardian:
“…the McCanns have now either suffered the cruellest fate imaginable - not only to have innocently lost their beloved daughter but also to have been publicly accused of a wicked crime - or they are guilty of the most elaborate and heinous confidence trick in history…”
It is now very hard to see anything positive coming from this case, however it may end. If the parents are found guilty, somehow our British values and trust itself will have taken a public battering. If they are found guilty unsatisfactorily, or it emerges the Portuguese police have bungled or -God forbid- framed the McCanns, how will Britain react to Portugal?
The proper job of the press, given the current situation, is to report only the facts and respect the McCanns as they approach what appears to be their most serious trial yet. We need balanced, non-hysterical reporting although what we will get may well be quite the opposite.
