The danger of emotional journalism

For what is now longer than three months, the British nation has been hooked on the disappearance of four year old Madeleine McCann. Right from the beginning a few warning voices said that the amount of emotional heart-string pulling exercised by the British media was disproportionate when so many children sadly went missing somewhere every day.



But these people were written off as cynics as the emotional groundswell gathered force. She was too good an image to be ignored of course. A pretty, blonde little blue eyed child who represented everything middle class white Britain would want its children to be - cruelly taken from her apartment at dead of night by some abductor while the parents ate dinner nearby. The McCanns have been feted as such brave stoic parents, staying in the resort until 'our Madeleine is returned' while in between flying off to conferences about child abduction in America and other places.

Posters were issued - I had one on my windshield, caught up in this as much as everyone else - asking the whole world 'Have you seen Madeleine?' with the picture of this pretty child accompanying the text. Rumours abounded that she had been sighted in Belgium, Spain, Austria...but nothing ever came of any of the rumours.

Now it seems, the Portuguese police have privately told their journalists - as they are not allowed officially to comment on an investigation - that they believe the little girl died in the McCanns' apartment on May 9th and was never abducted by anybody.






Now if this proves to be the case, and forensic analysis of blood samples found there is currently being done, then the case will, of course, turn full circle and the finger of suspicion will point in another direction altogether. I have no wish to speculate on the outcome of this case except to say that the way it is drifting now, if the abduction theories are all found to be false, there will be a tremendous sense of anger and disillusion among the British population who got wrapped up in all the emotional implications of one missing child, who looked every day for news of her, who took their car stickers abroad with them (I did!) and who looked hopefully on the streets of Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin...wherever...hoping to be the hero who reunited missing Madeleine with her loving parents.

If the press had dealt with this story proportionately and rationally right from the start much of this emotional over committment would have been avoided. Its good to feel angry about the fate of any child - but to so hook the nation on an emotional sob story has its downside. Now the public comment sections of every national newspaper contain angry remarks like 'Live it up while you can Kate and Gerry - the net is closing in on you'. Well there is no more justification for this pack animal savaging of the McCanns than there was the exorbitant emotional sobs of support for the last few months. There is no proof of their involvement in the child's disappearance and /or murder. That has yet to be resolved. People are so fickle when they get emotionally involved like this and angry when their idealistic images appear to be dashed. Whats worse is the next time a child goes missing - maybe one not as pretty and photogenic as Madeleine McCann - and where grieving parents need all the support they can get, the nation will simply say 'I bet it was the parents all along' before the facts are known and that could be even more unbalanced and unfair.