Madeleine McCann: ‘Creepy’ Robert Murat Sues Media, FBI Investigates And Hating Kate McCann
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE SUN: “McCanns want an FBI probe”
The FBI is America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. Madeleine McCann is British child who went missing in Portugal.
Says the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell: “We believe Portuguese police have been found wanting. We are asking the British Government to call for such an inquiry. It’s important for Madeleine and other missing children.”
But what of the FBI?
Kate and Gerry want a panel of missing children experts, including former US and Met police, to look at how the inquiry team handled itself.
So not an FBI probe, rather an investigation by a group of which some may be American. Read all about it!
THE GUARDIAN: “McCann case suspect issues record number of libel writs.”
One of the formal suspects in the Madeleine McCann case is to sue 12 media outlets in what may be one of the largest libel claims in the history of the British media.
It’s “creepy” “oddball” Robert Murat:
Robert Murat is demanding damages from 11 newspapers and one TV station. It is the largest number of claims ever made against different British media outlets on the same issue.
Simons Muirhead and Burton, a London-based law firm, confirmed it was “representing Robert Murat in respect of a number of libel actions”.
The case is being brought against Sky, the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Metro, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, News of the World, Sun and the Scotsman.
The Mirror’s Lori Campbell told the police of the “creepy” Murat. But why did she tell the press?
Watching Robert Murat
THE HERALD: “Madeleine suspect Murat could win £2m suing UK media”
Caroline Kean, of media law specialists Wiggin, said that if Mr Murat successfully argued the papers inferred he was involved in Madeleine’s abduction or murder, he could win a record payout.
She said: “You could expect £200,000 per paper, per claim, and that would clear £2m.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann ‘suspect’ Robert Murat sues British media for libel”
He and his family are believed to be particularly aggrieved by a number of reports in the aftermath of his being made an arguido – or official suspect – which repeated claims made by Portuguese media.
In at least one case – the false allegation that there were pornographic images on his computer – the Portuguese media later published corrections.
THE TIMES: “Brits love to torture a ‘bad mother’”
Says Melanie Reid: “In a long media career, the persecution of Kate McCann is the cruellest thing I have seen.”
Crueller than the media’s take on Robert Murat?
How many centuries of accumulated spite and misogyny, I wonder, went into the latest twist in the Madeleine McCann saga.
Did the British television presenters feel the remotest twinge of conscience as they sensationally reported – second-hand via a Spanish television station – the leaks from the Portuguese police portraying Kate McCann in the worst possible light, as a mother who had left her children to cry?
And did Britain’s tabloid editors, themselves presumably sons of mothers and husbands to the mothers of their own children, flinch even a jot as they ordered the devastating headlines “Mummy, why didn’t you come when we cried?” to be unfurled on their front pages alongside the face of the missing little girl?
I have seen, lived with and been party to many different kinds of sadism in a long media career, but I honestly think that this latest outbreak of malice towards Kate McCann is just about the cruellest thing I have witnessed…
But somehow we have passed a watershed. With this latest betrayal, picking deep at Kate McCann’s emotional scars, we have regressed to the level of the medieval peasants reaching for the ducking stool. Although women suspected of being witches, I sometimes grimly think, received a fairer fate in their slow drowning than do modern women accused of being bad mothers, who are tortured to the point of mental disintegration.
And then the clincher:
Why do we do perpetuate this immense cruelty upon women? There is no justice in it. Kate McCann is just the latest in a long line of high-profile victims of the prevailing fatwa – that all mothers must be perfect, self-sacrificing angels. From Kate McCann to Louise Campbell (the mother of Molly/ Misbah, the Scots girl who fled to be with her father in Pakistan), to Britney Spears to Anne Robinson to Frances Shand Kydd, nobody loves to torture a perceived bad mother or a bolter like the British do.
Yeah, Britney Spears, Princess Diana’s mother and a BBC quiz show host are like Kate McCann, a woman whose child went missing and is an “arguido” in the case. Good of Ms Reid to point that out.
Posted: 14th, April 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,055) | TrackBack | Permalink
