Madeleine McCann: Katie Hopkins finds ‘Maddie’ on the other side
Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.
Daily Star (front page): “Maddie: Parents ‘blamed'”
For what? Why? But whom? We soon get to know:
Katie Hopkins sparks fury by saying Maddie McCann’s parents ‘must share blame’
Katie Hopkins, for those of you blessedly not in the know, is a former contestant on The Apprentice TV show – the one on which ‘driven’ people try to win a job working for Alan Sugar in a Brentwood office block. Hopkins lost but did score a job belching ‘controversial’ opinions to deadline for the Sun newspaper and, remarkably, a TV show of her own. That all ended, meaning Katie now shouts exclusively on free-to-air Twitter.
The Star thinks her tweets worthy of its front page. Robin Cottle has created a story from a tweet:
She claimed Kate and Gerry McCann should take some blame for her disappearance.
Oh?
The 41-year-old also insisted the heartbroken couple did not “deserve” the £11million of taxpayers’ cash shelled out to search for Madeleine.
This is in the Star, which once libelled Kate and Gerry McCann.
One Twitter user wrote: “Katie Hopkins victim blaming the McCanns suggests people have no self control, the blame lies with whoever wrongly took what wasn’t theirs.”
Good grief. This story had not made any progress.
Another added: “Yes they made a mistake. Thousands do the same every day and get away with it. Cruel for Hopkins to rub salt in it surely. How did she become our moral guide?”
Answer: when the Star wanted cheap filler.
But some supported the outspoken celeb, with one saying: “Agree with absolutely everything @KTHopkins has said about Maddie’s disappearance, she’s only saying what the rest of you think anyway.”
Always useful when talking of “outrage” to report both sides of the shouting match.
Having seduced readers with a limp story on the missing child, the report takes a jerking twist:
Madeleine went missing during a family holiday in Praia de Luz, Portugal, almost nine years ago. Meanwhile, Hopkins announced yesterday that she was about to go under the surgeon’s knife to cure her epilepsy.
“Meanwhile…” Even the Dallas TV show (‘Meanwhile…back at the Ranch’) didn’t jump around like a demented kangaroo – which might very well be writing both the Star’s reports and Katie’s tweets.
She told fans she will “see them on the other side” and claimed not to be scared about the brain operation.
For those of you not on Twitter, ‘the other side’ is thought to be a reference to Facebook.
Posted: 23rd, February 2016 | In: Celebrities, Madeleine McCann, Reviews, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
