The McCann media coverage

[Daniel]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/19/will_davies_tv_torture/

Quite an interesting comment on modern man/woman. Or at least I think it is. I thought this deserved another thread to the main one as it's not actually on the case and what happened.

[SOD]

Danny-boy, the media jumps from one hot topic to the other. Last week it was the McCann's, this week it's Northern rock, and next week it'll be something else.

[Daniel]

Madeleine McCann again? :p

[SOD]

a few weeks back I was wondering what happened to the Mccann story.

[SOD]

I'd bet that OJ Simpson will be the hot news item of next week :dozey:

[Flat.tyres]

Problem is, people love a good soap opera and the McCann story has had it all. A missing child, condemnation for the parents, protracted search, incompetent policeing, conspiracy theories, suspicion on the parents, allergations of a fit up, possible police corruption or bungleing again and now, who knows?

People have excelled at jumping to conclusions on a wave of media enduced frenzy instead of waiting to see what comes out of a complete investigation and how those conclusions stand up to interrogation in a court of Law.

The problem with trial by media is that it costs nothing to form a slanted opinion deduced from media reporting and has no personal consequense apart from for the stakeholders in this play. From the pubs to the forum boards, you will find the Plat du Jour of current feelings on the case from, They're guilty, they're innocent, they don't show the right sort of emotion, they must have drugged her, it was the friends, she was weighed down and dropped in the sea etc.

So Danny boy, part of the pleasure of having a free press is that the masses can get the enjoyment of playing these high publicity cases as part of their actual lives. The media is now a member of the family and people feel a genuine attachment to what is being reported. When Diana died, the public outpouring was intense and real. People were in actual shock and mouring because Diana was part of their life and they knew more about her than close members of their own family and when a little girl goes missing, we gossip, mutter and conspire our opinions like headscarfed washer women in a Les Dawson sketch.

After all, do you not get some pleasure out of this yourself. Not the facts of the case but the muttering and speculation that goes along with it. The speculation, moral condemnation, retribution and premature conclusions?

[Daniel]

I think you're reading into it a little too much. I don't get enjoyment out of it. I'd rather it never appeared and they never "lost" their child.

The Diana thing was ridiculous. That's all I can really say about it......

[Flat.tyres]

I never said you got pleasure out of it did I :rolleyes: but people obviously take some interest in the case to come up with such a popular thread as the McCanns one was.

Didn't you claim that something didn't add up and speculate that they had done it before it was even a line of inquiry because of the way they acted? Did you know that the police told them not to display emotion in public in-case the abductor got off on the distress.

This is how these theories start and why trial by media is so dangerous. It sways public opinion where people take what is reported at face value without weighing it against alternatives that we aren't told.

[Drew]

I think next week global warming will make a comeback to the tabloid press.

[Dave B]

As is so often the way, the most sensible comment comes from Charlie Brooker (new series of Screen Wipe starts on BBC Four tonight, people):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2168344,00.html

[Daniel]

As is so often the way, the most sensible comment comes from Charlie Brooker (new series of Screen Wipe starts on BBC Four tonight, people):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2168344,00.html
Hilariously good and true.

[BeansBeansBeans]

Charlie Brooker (new series of Screen Wipe starts on BBC Four tonight, people

Hurrah!

[BDunnell]

And it was very good, as ever, as with his column. But I digress.