Madeleine McCann: Compare And Contrast, An Easter Miracle And David Cameron
MADDYWATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
INDEPENDENT: “Shannon’s miracle: the backlash begins”
Cole Moreton writes:
Comparisons with Madeleine McCann who went missing in Portugal last year were inevitable. Shannon was not the daughter of a couple of good-looking, wealthy, middle-class doctors with friends who knew how to work the media, as Madeleine was…
There are already signs that the togetherness brought on by the search for Shannon could fall apart. But so much was achieved by the people of this much-maligned area. They lacked the glamour, the organisation or the wealth of the campaign to find Madeleine McCann (currently offering a reward of £2.6m sponsored by Sir Richard Branson, among others), and they faced the prejudice of people who looked down on a scruffy council estate on a hill in West Yorkshire, but they kept going anyway, even when it looked hopeless. “People are saying Julie Bushby deserves an honour, and she does,” said Mr Hyett, “but there should be something for the whole community. We didn’t give up.”
Poor but plucky. That’s the real story in the media…
IAIN DALE (Tory blogger): “The ‘People Like Us’ Phenomenon”
Last night on Sky News we briefly discussed why the media gave a much higher profile to the Madeleine McCann case than the Shannon Matthews disappearance. There are, I’m sure lots of factors, but one was the fact that for the media, the McCanns were very much “people like us”, or should I say, people like them. The Matthews family were nothing like the media classes in appearance, lifestyle and outlook. I really think there is something in this. Let’s take the analogy further.
Let’s…
My fellow panelist, Peter Whittle, asserted that the reason David Cameron was given more or less a free ride by the media in his first eighteen months was because he belonged to the “people like us” class. Was this part of the reason the media were so keen to promote him, and do down David Davis after his conference speech? Not consciously, but I do wonder if there was something subconcious about it.
Why was the coverage of the New Orleans floods slightly underdone by the US media? It might it have been different if it had happened in Manhatten, where “people like us” live?
Harriet Harman was given a comparatively easy ride by the media when she sent her kids to a selective school. Could it have been because many media people were facing the same dilemma?
Then: “I could go on, but you see my point.”
That Madeleine McCann can be placed in the cotext of the New Orleans flood, Harriet Harman’s children and a speech by David Cameron? MaddyWatch was made for such things…
SUNDAY HERALD: “How fortunate the police chose not to follow the media’s shoddy example”
Torcuil Crichton on class and crime
EVEN THOUGH it is close to Easter, describing the discovery of missing Shannon Matthews alive, just one mile from her home, as “back from the dead” may not have been media hyperbole…
Until the miracle of Dewsbury happened on live television, there had been too scant media attention paid to Shannon Matthews. Inevitably, we compare coverage to that afforded to Madeleine McCann, who, if column inches ever changed anything, would by now have been reunited with her parents too. Their grim limbo continues even though they went out of the way to maximise publicity, only to create an insatiable media monster that at one stage almost swallowed them up.
Conversely, in the case of Shannon Matthews the media, ourselves included, did not seem to care too much when she was missing.
The McCanns were, although it was almost taboo to point it out, protected by their middle-class status. Had they been part of the white underclass on holiday at a down-at-heel Spanish resort, their treatment by the media would have been far rougher and more intrusive had they been paid any attention at all.
As it was, they went through a pretty torrid time anyway when, in the absence of any real developments, they became the centre of the story.
And in the Sunday Herald, they still are.
SUNDAY PEOPLE: “FAMILY TANGLE WILL BE PROBED SCHOOLGIRL BACK HOME BUT MYSTERY OF HER DISAPPEARANCE DEEPENS THE EXPERT: John Stalker”
Says John Stalker: “Police must seriously examine whether family connivance may be a feature. Large cash rewards are often available for the return of a missing child, such as in the Madeleine McCann inquiry. In Shannon’s case, the money on offer will undoubtedly have tempted some to make fraudulent claims. A shrewd investigator will know that.”
BRADFORD TELEGRAPH AND ARGUS: “Now please go and find my missing Gavin’”
The mother of missing Basildon teenager Gavin Terry has urged West Yorkshire Police to channel their efforts into finding her son – more than two months after he disappeared without a trace.
Philomena Terry spoke out after police discovered nine-year-old schoolgirl Shannon Matthews following one of the biggest manhunts the force has carried out in recent years…
Now Mrs Terry, of Luis Court, Baildon, said she hoped that West Yorkshire Police would re-direct its focus back to the hunt for missing Gavin, 19.“We just want peace of mind to know what has happened to him,” she said.
The final-year student vanished after a night out with friends in Leeds city centre at 1am on Saturday, January 12…
Last week, Mrs Terry joined the heartbroken relatives of other missing children, including the family of Madeleine McCann, at a march in London. The mothers of two teenagers who also vanished organised the event to highlight the scale of the problem and its effect on families.
Spinning out the single-thread story
Posted: 16th, March 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (84) | TrackBack | Permalink
