Monday September 17, 2007 Wat observaties van Peter Wilby over Britse journalisten, (
The Guardian). Een gedeelte:
Never mind the facts, this is showbusinessYou wouldn't know it, but almost nothing new has been said officially about the case, either by the Portuguese police or by the forensic science service in Britain. The facts are: the McCanns were questioned last week, a file has gone to the prosecutor, the British have analysed evidence from the site of the disappearance and sent some results to Portugal. Nearly everything else - the hair in the car, the investigations in the local church, the demands for Cuddle Cat, the diary contents and so on - is speculation, based on unnamed sources. Even the precise meaning of "arguido/a" is unclear. Most of the speculation comes from the Portuguese press and British journalists are in the happy position of being able to repeat such reports while denouncing them as wicked Latin inventions. "Gerry may not be the father," was one Express headline. Beneath, the story began: "The smear campaign in Portugal against the McCanns continued yesterday . . ."
The reporters who have followed the case - mostly without giving any hint that we should doubt Madeleine was abducted by a passing stranger - now fear they will look fools. All their carefully crafted pieces about the parents' anguish, stoicism and dedication to finding their daughter will seem pretty silly if the McCanns prove responsible. "The consequences would be harmful almost beyond measure," warned the Mail's David Jones. "Such an incredible outcome would forever destroy the inherent faith we place in outwardly decent, caring parents ... and with it our very trust in the goodness of human nature. It would make cynics of us all." Cynics? Even in Fleet Street? Heaven forfend. They certainly don't include Jones's colleague, Allison Pearson. Closely scrutinising Kate McCann from her sofa in front of the telly, Pearson remained confident of the woman's innocence. "Notice the checked trousers that fitted her four months ago flapping on her emaciated frame. Watch her head lean with infinite tenderness into her baby daughter's face."
Nevertheless, some reporters discovered that they had "niggling suspicions" all along. If you wondered why they hadn't mentioned them before, it was because, as Jones put it, "such a terrible notion" was "almost unspeakable, even within . . . my own four walls". He had found Gerry McCann's weblog "strangely breezy and matter-of-fact". The Sunday Telegraph's Olga Craig, who had interviewed the McCanns earlier in the summer, now reported that Kate had become "very edgy" and "stood up and walked off" when questioned about their failure to use a baby-sitter or lock the apartment. She came across as "detached, a little cold". Only after "lengthy gentle coaxing" would she talk of her emotions.
The Mail on Sunday's Chris Leake had found something fishy in the behaviour of friends who were dining with the McCanns on the night Madeleine disappeared. One informed the police she saw someone carrying a child near the McCanns' apartment, but she "refused to talk publicly". Another agreed to a press interview but "changed her mind". Back in England, a colleague of Kate McCann's became "hostile towards approaches from this newspaper".
Ook een 'aardig' stukje over die zus van Gerry McCann en wel Philomena McCann, ook uit The Guardian: een fragment.With prejudiceInside the drab, tile-clad police station in Portimao, there is a television tuned to Sky News. Officers are monitoring the UK news network, which has mounted rolling coverage of the case they are investigating, for one reason: they want to know what the world is saying about them.
That explains the outrage 10 days ago, on the evening that Gerry and Kate McCann were declared formal suspects, or arguidos, in the disappearance of their daughter. Police were still questioning Gerry McCann when, already, his sister Philomena was telling Sky they had offered Kate McCann a reduced two-year sentence if she admitted to killing her daughter accidentally, hiding the body and then secretly disposing of it weeks later.
On this occasion the police officers were right to be angry. Like many things said about the McCann affair over the past days and months, the story was wrong. There was no offer of a plea bargain. It had all been "a misunderstanding", the McCann lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, explained the following day.
That did not mean, of course, that Philomena McCann - one of many people speaking for what might broadly be called "the McCann camp" - was wrong about the rest of it. Portuguese police do seem to be considering accidental death followed by disposal of the corpse as a possibility in this most bizarre of cases. In this story without on-the-record sources, however, they have not even publicly confirmed that much.
It now seems incredible, however, to recall that the McCanns started suing Portugal's Tal & Qual magazine for saying just that a little over two weeks ago: Philomena McCann's statement gave British journalists the green light to start reporting the allegations against the McCanns - even though, if they are found not guilty in any future trial, editors could be sued.
The scene inside the police station helps explain something of the nature of what has become one of the world's biggest media storms. The journalists watch the police, the police watch the journalists and the world watches them all - showing an insatiable appetite for even the flimsiest reports about the McCann case."
Zulke achtergrond-verhaaltje mag ik ook graag lezen...