Madeleine McCann: No Change, A Tourist Site And Entertainment
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE GUARDIAN: “Last night’s TV: Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change”
It’s difficult to keep the visuals stimulating, too. We saw the McCanns at home in Leicestershire; Kate and Jerry talking on the sofa. But you can’t have two hours of sofa, so we joined them in a lot of taxis – in Portugal, London, Washington. And there were plenty of lingering tree shots – leafless, winter trees (this is a sad story, after all). And a flying heron … eh, what’s that about? Maybe the heron is an aguido, too. Does Sir Trevor know?
DAILY MAIL: “Madeleine holiday apartment becomes ‘sick tourist attraction’ one year on from her disappearance”
Coachloads of journalists arrive every day. It’s sick.
DAILY MIRROR: “Tourists posing for pictures at McCann tragedy spots”
Pensioner Pamela Fenn, who lives above the McCanns’ holiday apartment, said: “It’s sick.
“They stand outside and then have photographs taken with their children.”
A source close to the McCanns said yesterday: “It’s disgraceful.”
It’s not as if the disappearance of a missing child is entertaining.
The floodlights at Premiership club Everton will be switched on this Saturday to mark the anniversary in a campaign called Light The Way Home.
LIVERPOOL ECHO: “Madeleine McCann: Family prepare for first anniversary of her disappearance”
People around the world are being urged to light a candle, shine a torch or turn on a porch lamp on Saturday night as a gesture of support for Madeleine’s family and friends.
A lighter held in the air?
Robert Murat, the third arguido in the case, is intending to maintain a low profile and will probably stay away from Praia da Luz on Saturday.
He said: “The anniversary is for a little girl who went missing – Madeleine.
“The anniversary is not about us, the McCanns, the PJ (Portuguese detectives) or anything else but a little girl going missing.”
THE TIMES: “Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change; Escape from Alcatraz: The True Story”
Stefanie Marsh: Why must television do compassion? Why, when faced with a captive audience, a prime-time slot and a story that could, if they’d let it, tell itself, must television turn to mush and mutate into a series of treacly Hallmark bereavement cards?…
At one point Gerry McCann admits that his “wife is carrying on in a quasi-real existence”. What she is really doing is falling apart, but too much gloop from the director turned the McCanns’ terrible situation into a guilt trip that made me want to watch The Apprentice instead.
THE INDEPENDENT: “Last Night’s TV: Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change ITV1″
“You can’t always blame the parents,” says Thomas Stucliffe:
They still get a lot of letters, the McCanns, sorting them out into boxes marked “well-wishers”, “ideas”, “psychics” and “nutty”. Incredibly, they also need a box marked “nasty” for messages such as the one that Gerry read out at the beginning of the film. “How can you use money given by poor people in good faith to pay your mortgage on your mansion? You fucking thieving bastards. Your brat is dead because of your drunken arrogance. Shame on you. I curse you and your family to suffer forever. Cursed Christmas. If you had any shame, you would accept full responsibility for your daughter’s disappearance and give all the money back. You are scum.” This heart-warming expression of support had been written inside a Christmas card. The Daily Express, by contrast, chose to print its hate mail on its own front page, confident that there were enough readers out there who would prefer infanticide to unresolved mystery – or to no McCann story at all. And all the time, the McCanns themselves live a life horribly suspended between what might have been and what could happen next, between “if only” and “maybe”.
Posted: 1st, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (715) | TrackBack | Permalink
