Maddy Mccann And 24-hour Rolling News

[Slim]

It brings me back to the dreadful Soam murders. Awful stories, and ones that grab the public interest, but imagine if you were one of the hundreds of other parents who's kids go missing every day. They must be thinking, what's wrong with my kids that nobody cares this much about them?

 

Dreadful story but it is odd how the 24 hour news grabs onto them and doesn't let em go as you say.

[Speckled Frost]

Yes, it's a terrible situation and parents out there are closely following the case because they can empathise with what the McCann family are going through.

 

However, the media obsession on 24-hour news channels is hilarious to watch.

 

The sound of desperation as the smallest hint of a new element to the story breaks.

 

The channels can't tear themselves away from the scene so they just stand there rambling.

 

"Hi, we're here outside some flats in Praia da Luz. Beside me are some trees and yes, I am standing on ground (camera pans down). Above me you can see that we are below some sky, yes some sky.

"I tried to get some official confirmation from the GNR Inspector about this but they are refusing to comment, hiding behind the terrible Portuguese juducial laws."

[ans]

I'm as sympathetic as every other parent is to their plight and I genuinely hope for the safe return of this girl as soon as possible. However, the news coverage is emotive, deliberately invasive and intent on pushing emotional buttons for the consumer. Pages filled with out of focus photographs from christmas two years ago serve no other purpose than to make the viewer of them go 'Aww' and well up. Yes, the story needs to continue to be reported on but a little bit of restraint and limiting it to the few facts they have would be so much better.

 

but imagine if you were one of the hundreds of other parents who's kids go missing every day. They must be thinking, what's wrong with my kids that nobody cares this much about them?

 

There was a story in one of the local papers there about a two year old who went missing a few days ago and nobody from the Police was able to attend because all resources were committed to this case. From memory, this toddler turned up the next day.

[thebees]

I think the media involvement with this case its a bit strange, I thought there was something weird with the Soam media presentations too. Its like the media are feeding 'someone' - I would like to hope that this child will be returned but its looking very unlikely.

[Addie]

I feel for the parents. That goes without saying. They must going through terrible torment for many reasons. We must all have slipped up whilst in charge of our children at one time or another. There, but for good fortune go we all. Maybe this is a factor in the level of interest.

 

However, I was beginning to think that I was the only person finding this shrine building obsession by people who are totally unconnected with this family, positively mawkish.

 

I got fed up when we were watching people with scant personal knowledge of this family, and with no connection whatsoever, trotting into churches (since when did praying become a media event?) and gathering at - and upsetting their own children by taking them to visit - the yellow ribboned stuffed teddies shrines popping up all over the country,

 

And the emails!

 

And the money!

 

I thought that the people handing out posters to those travelling to Portugal were an excellent idea. Likewise the bikers who took some posters into the more remote areas of the country.

 

But, the media are on one of their saturating, sickening, intrusive, easy news missions. They are disgusting.

 

What about all the children, mentioned in passing last week, that are carers for their invalid parents? They are not able to play outside, go to after school activities. No school discos, no sports clubs, no Saturday shopping sprees in town, no McDonalds, no cinema, no social life at all.

 

These children look after their parents for seven days a week.

 

The press is so busy on their latest feeding frenzy that all other stories get lost in the dust.

 

What about the Rwandan woman being raped by five men, then watching her children die and then forced to hang her own baby?

 

The press will be off as soon as something else ‘more interesting’ comes along and the poor family will wonder what happened to all the interest.

 

Remember the helicopter crash connected to football that was on rolling news a couple of weeks ago. All manner of correspondants gathered near spot where the helicopter came down hoping that a big name was on board. As soon as the dead were identified – and classed as of low interest – the story completely disappeared!

 

Users, all.

[thebees]

Great post!

[ans]

What about the Rwandan woman being raped by five men, then watching her children die and then forced to hang her own baby?

 

Perfectly illustrating your point.. but what?

[Addie]

What about the Rwandan woman being raped by five men, then watching her children die and then forced to hang her own baby?

 

Perfectly illustrating your point.. but what?

 

Sorry, I wasn't very clear, but hey, I'm old. Anyway, briefly, my point was that is was mentioned on the radio but the topic of murders and rapes like these have are given very short - if any - press exposure. Foreign lives seem to have such a lesser value than our own, don't they?

 

The other point, was regarding the plight of young carers - hear 07.15 item and read feature here- that should be a national disgrace mentioned daily until these children were given more care.

[John Wright]

Am I alone in thinking that if you leave your 3 year old and two one year olds without adult supervision it is a crime.

 

These people chose to abandon their children whilst they went out to eat drink and make merry

 

What about the sacrifices that are supposed to come with parenthood.

[Slim]

I think they were quite foolish, especially as it turns out the door was left open too so they could check back easily.

[Pragmatopian]

Can only agree with the posts so far.

 

Obviously very distressing for those involved, but in the grand scheme of things not worthy of anywhere near the level of coverage it's receiving. Journalists are meant to gather and report the news: not generate it. We do not need to be told what to think and feel about it.

 

My initial reaction was also that it seemed extremely irresponsible for the parents to have left three very young children unattended for extended periods in unsecured and unfamiliar premises. A lot can happen in half an hour.

[Albert Tatlock]

I thought the Independent (Editors comment) summed things up quite well...

 

Wild theories and a warped sense of priorities

INDEPENDENT Published: 15 May 2007

We live with the delusion of control. We order our lives, our homes, our jobs. We choose our children's schools and arrange their after-school care. We timetable our visit to the gym, our journey to work, our day in the office, our evening before the television. We stay in touch through mobile phones, text messages and emails. But then it all falls apart. Someone close to us dies in a car crash, or is taken ill, or falls victim to a terrible crime.

 

Usually such existential agonies we suffer in private. The world turns, unaware and unconcerned. The clocks do not stop. But, occasionally, a case achieves public prominence. Sometimes, as with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it combines celebrity with the shock of an unanticipated death. On other occasions, as with the disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann, it resonates as what the populist press loves to call "every parent's nightmare", in which the public is encouraged to indulge a vicarious sense of identification with the unhappy family at the centre of the affair - and enjoy a rather distasteful thrill at the drama of the event and at the fact it has not, thankfully, happened to us.

 

In response we luxuriate in a pale imitation of the McCann family's distress. We echo their sense of impotence in our need to "do something", whether that is tying yellow ribbons to fences, placing cuddly toys on war memorials, holding up posters at football matches or releasing pink balloons into the sky to symbolise ... what, is not quite clear. Such are the homespun sacraments to which contemporary society resorts, having abandoned the rituals of religion in which Mr and Mrs McCann themselves have sought solace.

 

The media has offered its own acts of psychological displacement. Not least of these have been the self-righteous indignation that some newspapers have poured on the Portuguese police. There has been an unsavoury jingoism in the way this foreign police force has been caricatured as incompetent, wilfully ignoring the fact that it has two distinct forces, one responsible for searches and another for criminal investigations. And there has been an obscurantist refusal to accept that the Portuguese judicial process insists police cannot reveal anything about a criminal investigation, or potential suspects, for fear of jeopardising any eventual trial.

 

This is not the only charge against the media. It has displayed a warped ingenuity in a constant flow of articles on a story on which there has been little new to say. Speculation has continued unabated, with wild theories of lone paedophiles, criminal gangs, child smuggling rings, childless couples, jealous mothers and revenge attacks. Not to mention shrill commentators, with tasteless accusations of neglect levelled against the unfortunate couple, in articles of calculated insensitivity.

 

The truth is that the nation's children are not seriously at risk from marauding paedophiles. Despite all the talk of stranger-danger, most child abuse is perpetrated from within the family. And children are far more at risk from falls from open windows or pushchairs where they are not strapped in - or from matches and lighters, medicines and chemicals, kettles and light flexes, broken glass or kitchen knives, or from choking on small toys, peanuts and marbles - than they are from sexual predators. Nearly all lost children are found. The worst that will happen to most children left unattended in bed is that they will awake, become upset and cry.

 

The hysteria created by the reporting of this and similar cases does no service to anyone. It will lead only to children being wrapped in cotton wool and prevented from developing the social skills and independence they need to survive. Far from offering a shared catharsis, all it does is spread the virus of fear.

[Gladys]

Much along my own thinking on this one, Albert. Yes, we would all hate like hell to be in these parents' position and, I am afraid, it doesn't look very hopeful. But the media attention has turned it into a circus with endless speculation about what the Portugese police are, or are not doing. Time for the media frenzy to die down, allow the Portugese police to do their job and let the parents reconcile themselves to this sad situation without media glare. When there is something to report, then we should hear about it, not a stream of cliches 'extraordinary twists and turns' etc.

 

And John, I do agree with you that such young children should never have been left alone. That is not to say that the parents brought this upon themselves, but rather despite what the law may or may not say, I couldn't conceive of leaving such young children alone at night. Not because of fears of abduction, or even playing with matches, but concern that if they woke up without an adult they would be very, very frightened regardless of whether there was any real danger or not. I just cannot understand how a parent could expose their tiny children to that fear. On holiday, we would take the children out with us in the evenings when they were very small, in a pushchair with a reclining back so when they were tired the back was let down, the pram pushed into a quiet corner and they slept. We wouldn't go anywhere that would be unsuitable for children, that was what family holidays were about.

[Addie]

We wouldn't go anywhere that would be unsuitable for children, that was what family holidays were about.

I couldn't agree more Gladys.

 

I've been thinking about these quarter-hour or was if half-hour checks on the children.

 

Either's a hell of a long time for a small child - or even three of them - to find themselves awakened by a nightmare even, frightened, alone, at risk of harm from many quarters, no Mum or Dad and in a strange room.

 

The parents will never ever forgive themselves over this, whatever the outcome.

[Slim]

Independant are spot on there.