The McCanns and the media: A morality tale for our times?

een seen as victims. But they had just beennamed ‘arguidos’ and returned to Britain. Theymight even be the perpetrators of a dastardlycrime. It could have gone badly wrong forthem. In his first month back in the saddle,Mitchell managed to muddy the waters aroundthe case very successfully so that the negativeflow was at least abated.But at a price. Both at the public events and inthe blogosphere, he is a much-hated figure.Websites such as ‘the3arguidos.net’ are dedicatedto prove the McCanns guilty and Mitchella pure charlatan. The hatred of Kate and Gerryis based on their supposed neglect of children,their middle classness and their ease with anduse of the media. The traffic on the ‘Madeleine’sites is immense: so too the depth of the bile.They make for very unpleasant reading.Mitchell and, by one remove, the McCanns havesometimes, some may say often, over-steppedthe mark. Producing sketches of ‘suspects’ is notproperly their legal role. Nor the firm of Spanishprivate investigators employed (at a cost of£50,000 a month from the £1 million-plus‘Missing Madeleine’ fund subscribed to by thepublic) to follow up any ‘sightings’, howeverflaky and wherever. That is more PR than detectivework.The ‘Missing Madeleine’ story and the everpresentMitchell provide us with a moraldipstick on the modern British media.Populist, concerned, knowing its audiencebut at the same time easily manipulated,gullible and prone to laziness and lying.When (and if) Madeleine is ever found, onehopes the moral compass of tabloid journalismis there as well.Note on ContributorJohn Mair is a senior lecturer in journalism at Coventry University. Heproduced ‘Missing Madeleine McCann: The perfect PR’ in Coventryon 18 October 2007 and ‘The media and the McCanns’ at the LSE on30 January 2008. Both are available as podcasts on the CoventryUniversity and polis@lse websites. Email: Johnmair100@hotmail.com32 Copyright 2008-1/2. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 5, No 1/2 2008 ARTICLE