Off to CNN to talk with the excellent Portugese London correspondent Rita Jordao about the McCann coverage. Everyone hopes that communications between the family and the media will improve now that the redoubtable ex-BBC, ex-FCO man Clarence Mitchell is handling their public relations. Rita points out that the Portugese press has been just as scurrilous as the UK tabloids ever were. “Some of these so-called police sources named in the Portugese press could have just been cleaners in police stations” she says. But the British media are as prone to using un-named ‘sources’ to give rumours enough solidity to fill front pages. Take today’s Mirror or Sun which quote anonymous ‘sources’ who say the parents are prepared to take a lie detector test. It’s another fact-free line but if Clarence peddled it, why doesn’t he go on the record? Even Downing Street spin-doctors are now quotable and citable.
Charlie Beckett
September 21st, 2007
Spinning the McCanns
Spinning the McCanns
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Charlie Beckett
2 Comments
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Portuguese “journalism” has been horrendous and abusive, not only of the McCanns ,but of any semblance of justice. Why are the Portuguese media not digging into the stories of the police charged in the Joana case, one of whom just got sacked from heading the caso Madeleine and another of whom is on staff at the Diario de Noticias, one of the Portuguese rags that, together with Correio da Manha, has demonstrated that the Portuguese “press” are nothing but lapdogs for the police. I suggest you read this David Rose piece for a little context. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=482007&in_page_id=1811
Moreover, why have the Portuguese press not investigated the existence of pedophiles in Portugal in connection with this case? Certainly, contrary to the patently ridiculous denials by police of the existence of any abductors in Portugal, they do, in fact, exist everywhere. And the fact that they exist and are tolerated in Portugal is evidenced by the widespread child sexual abuses, perpetrated with the apparent complicity of the Portuguese police and authorities, which began to be uncovered with the Casa Pia case a few years ago.
The fact is, Portuguese journalism is at an infantile stage, with the country having just recently come out of the dictatorship during which journalism was propaganda, and very few journalists have any real education in journalism as a profession, and as a result, they are doing a horrible job and creating a horrible miscarriage of justice. Please read Manuel Pinto and Helena Sousa’s study of Portuguese journalism, available online at:
http://bocc.ubi.pt/pag/pinto-manuel-sousa-helena-ensino-jornalismo1.html
The Paulo Reis blog that you have publicized is nothing but nonsense from a guy who thinks this is about warring media from Britain vs. Portugal. It is not! It is about a real family and a very real, uninvestigated situation in Portugal where the media behave as tools of a police force that at best is incompetent and at worst (and far more likely in my opinion as a journalist from the U.S. who has read every word, English and Portuguese, printed in this case) is blatantly corrupt.
Take a little time with this, Charlie. Don’t be so flip. The undercurrents are deep and obvious to anyone with a little bit of inclination to question authority.
Are you Clarence Mitchell by any chance Mary?