Madeleine McCann: the revolting Ben Needham fight
Madeleine McCann is back in the news. The Sun thunders:
Trolls force McCanns to take down Madeleine search Twitter account
Force?
THE official Madeleine McCann search Twitter account is being shut down due to “continuous abuse and negativity”.
A twitter account has been shut down because – get this – people on twitter say nasty things.
Administrators of the page, designed to raise awareness of missing Madeleine and others, announced the decision last night.
Awareness raised. It’s all over the Press. did you know there was an ‘official’ account?
It came hours after they were involved in an online spat with the campaign to find missing British toddler Ben Needham. The @FindMadeleine account sparked outrage when it blocked the @FindBenNeedham account.
Charming. As Harry Hill would says, “FIGHT!’
A manager of the Madeleine campaign said: “We do not want to be associated with some of the types of people they follow.”
But surely that doesn’t matter. The purpose is to get the child found, or at least to discover what happened to her.
Some individuals followed by Ben’s Twitter account are known to take an anti-McCann stance.
So what?
One tweeted: “How the hell is Kate McCann an ambassador (of charity Missing People)? She left her three kids alone to go on the p***.”
Maybe it’s because she gets Missing People into the news (see above).
Ben’s mum Kerry said: “Ben’s campaign has never been anti McCann — we can’t help the fact that some members of the public give their opinion about the McCann case just the same as people give their opinion about Ben’s case. I have never once spoken badly about the family, I have only ever given my opinion about the way the two cases have been handled so differently by the authorities.”
Fair point. It has been. Ben Needham never did become ‘Our Ben’, in the same way Madeleine became ‘Our Maddie’.
The row was resolved on Sunday evening when the Madeleine account lifted its block – but the damage had already been done. At 11.30pm on Sunday, the person in charge of the account tweeted: “Due to the continuous abuse and negativity on Twitter, we will be removing our account within the next few days.”
So goes the announcement.
On Facebook, they added: “This is the last time I will address this issue. Gerry and Kate do not use social media and have asked me to manage the social media accounts for our campaign. In the past couple of weeks there has been a concerted effort to get people to stop looking for Madeleine. Some argue the search costs too much, others say it’s hopeless. We don’t believe the search for Madeleine is hopeless and putting up polls asking if the search should stop is not only crass, it’s cruel. How can one put a price on the life of a child?
Well, there was a £2.5m reward.
The Met will give a £20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance.
“With that being said, I, and I alone, have made the decision to block ANYONE who thwarts the search for Madeleine via social media — whether that be with running commentary on the investigation, posting negative comments about the search/investigation/cost, or saying Madeleine is a lost cause.
“We believe Madeleine is alive and we have great faith in the Met. If you cannot be supportive of the search for Madeleine, please unlike/unfollow our social media pages. We want people who are hopeful and actually care about Madeleine being found supporting us.
“WE NEED YOUR HELP to find her and we don’t want negative comments filling our feeds.”
You’ve been told.
The Sun adds:
Ben Needham went missing on July 24, 1991, from the Greek island of Kos, There have been no sightings of the 21-month-old since. Madeleine McCann was three years old when she disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007.
The Mirror quotes Kerry Needham – it’s a bit like the Sun’s quote by includes a line about alleged slander:
“It feels like a personal attack on me. It is deeply, deeply hurtful. I have myself had massive amounts of slanderous abuse from supporters of the McCann Campaign in the past but I have never taken that personally. It’s freedom of speech. But it is getting the names of two missing children out there which is really important. I have never criticised the McCann family. I have only every criticised the authorities for the way the two cases have been handled so differently.”
Such are the facts.
Posted: 6th, October 2015 | In: Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
