Madeleine McCann: Let Us Pray, Light The Way, It’s A Year Today
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE SUN (front page): “MADDIE: 1 YEAR ON”
A year of headlines, sensation and speculation. A year of Watching The Parents.
DAILY MIRROR (front page): “LIGHT A CANDLE FOPR OUR MADDIE”
And leave a chair empty at the dinner table, too? And when should the candle be lit?
“9:15 tonight… A YEAR ON”
Did you light a candle a year after 7/11, the end of the Falklands War, the Hillsborough disaster?
Did the Mirror forget to tell you to?
It is “A DAY TO PRAY”.
FIONA PHILLIPS: “A year ago today Madeleine McCann’s mummy and daddy, Kate and Gerry, became victims of the most colossal crime.”
Mummy and daddy… Are Mirror readers being asked to empathise with Madeleine? The fact is, it could. It could happen to any of us.
Grip hands tighter. Avoid Portugal. Spread the anxiety. The rare crime of a chid abduction, as Phillips supposes, might find a victim in your child.
I fill my car up with petrol and sometimes leave the children in the back when I go and pay for it. It could happen to me.
I’ve seen mums chatting to friends in supermarkets and on busy pavements while their children wander off. It could happen to them.
It happened to the McCanns in a child-friendly, family holiday village. It could happen to you.
YORKSHIRE POST: “The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has written a special prayer to mark the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.”
Church of England PR?
Father God, we pray for Madeleine McCann Keep her safe and take away her fear and anxiety May your holy angels guard and protect her We pray that she may be reunited with those who love her Give hope to all her loved ones And hear our cry for her safe return We offer our prayer in the name of the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord. Amen.
DAILY TELEGRPAH: “McCann haters – the lowest of the low”
SIMON HEFFER:
Just when one thinks one’s capacity for shock is exhausted, one reads some of the charming, expletive-rich comments sent to Kate and Gerry McCann in the last year since their daughter Madeleine evaporated in Portugal. I know some nutters are convinced they killed her, which I am equally convinced is balderdash: but what shocks me is that even those who accept that someone else abducted her cannot resist delving into the still-open wound the McCanns have, and attacking them for their supposed negligence on that evening last May.
I try to envisage the sense of smug satisfaction these people have when the letter is posted or the send button pressed on the email: but, despite a long study of human degeneracy, I simply can’t.
THE SCOTSMAN: “In the shadow of the bogeyman”
There is no such comfort for my children’s generation. They know the worst can happen because it did. The bogeyman came and took Madeleine from her bed. And for weeks on end they could not turn their heads nor take a breath without being reminded that he had. The press picked up our fear and shone it back at us.
THE GUARDIAN: “Services to mark year since Madeleine vanished”
His wife added: “It’s funny in some ways, because you kind of think it’s just another day, really, almost like a media landmark than anything else. But I think we’ve maybe underestimated it, and it’s probably more significant than we felt. I don’t think we’ll know until the morning really what feels right.”
NEWSWEEK: “TABLOID FODDER – One year after Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal, lurid reporting continues to cash in on her disappearance.
She’s so famous that she only needs one name: Maddie.
Or Maddy?
Her image—those trusting eyes, that innocent grin, the shiny blond hair—haunts Britons, who may think that by now, they’ve heard everything about Madeleine McCann, the young British girl who vanished from a holiday resort in Portugal’s Algarve one year ago Saturday. Her disappearance is probably the most intensely followed mystery in modern British history. Tabloid sales skyrocket with coverage of even the most minor details, which could be why Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, has called it “the most significant story of my lifetime.”
Posted: 3rd, May 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (600) | TrackBack | Permalink
