Madeleine McCann: Email Hoaxes and TV Thrillers
MADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE GUARDIAN: “Beware of the hoax”
Emails that warn of preying rapists and ruthless carjackers are currently doing the rounds, but how seriously should we take them? Viv Groskop reports…
Emails?
Other warnings are born out of the fear generated by a real crime. Shortly after the Madeleine McCann case hit the headlines last year I received a “watch out” email from a friend of a friend about a local mother who claimed the police had told her a “paedophile ring” was operating in the area, after her child was almost snatched from her car. I talked to the police about this and they confirmed that there was a grain of truth in it: a local mother had reported that she had seen two men standing near her car. The police hadn’t been able to ascertain any criminal intent though, and they definitely didn’t mention anything about paedophiles. The story had simply spiralled.
Spreading the fear…
STUFF (NZ): “TV review: Thriller ripples with creepy menace”
No one makes thrillers quite like the English, with their ability to conjure out of the most mundane situations and artefacts the heights of creepiness and menace – exactly the cleverness of Sunday’s two-parter Bon Voyage.
Fact and fiction.
With echoes of the Madeleine McCann affair, this is the story of an English family on a camping trip to France, expecting the typical, rather boring, bickery sort of fortnight the Poms usually have abroad, when the two children are kidnapped.
Echoes of fact in work of fiction? It’s what passes for TV realism. It’s entertainment…
Posted: 11th, June 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann Comments (333) | TrackBack | Permalink
