WHY INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS STEER CLEAR

Hi Bjorn, thank you for your interesting post (on my previous blog).  Apologies for not being able to c/p it over.

 

I don't think there can be any doubt that the 'media' in the UK have hidden or withheld much of the truth behind Madeleine's disappearance. Why?  Multiple answers I imagine.  

 

Firstly, the McCanns are so litigious.  They have already punished the newspaper barons with large libel payouts and they have led the charge of Hacked Off. This couple hits back - twice as hard. It would not be hard to imagine news agencies have taken the decision not to antagonise them until their claws have been completely removed.  I don't think the protection of the McCanns by the media is based on their likeability.  More likely busy news desks can't be arsed with getting every McCann story past their legal departments, so they dump, or put aside, the negative ones.  

 

But even having said all that, it is by no means the end of it.  One person, or several, at a very high level, had, or perhaps still has, the power to turn an obvious crime that was solved by local police in weeks, into an international search for a missing child.  The abduction story comes across as a tall tale by any normal thinking adult's standards, it just doesn't ring true, but someone, in authority, in the UK, deemed it not only true, but the biggest threat to children this century.  Since then, we have watched in astonishment as British police officers and members of the establishment, have continued the McCann narrative as if it were all real, and whilst managing to maintain perfectly straight faces! Bizarre.  

 

For an example, look at Martin Brunt reporting from PDL at the time of the Scotland Yard digs, explaining how 'the police' think a burglar, having murdered Madeleine, took her body with him and buried it in the vicinity of 5A. That was not MB's finest hour, but he topped it with the Brenda Leyland debacle. Martin Brunt could not be more mainstream, he is employed by Sky News. Now did he, as an investigative journalist go look for an internet troll story?  Or was it handed to him on a plate? I doubt he would go rogue on Rupert Murdoch, so Sky must have supported his actions.  

 

So why would RM protect the McCanns?  He has been stung by them several times, both with large libel payouts and the evidence they gave at the Leveson Inquiry.  Some might say the McCann factor influenced the downfall of his News of the World.   Richard Desmond too - his was among the first big news agencies to be hit with a massive libel claim.  It must be said however, that even though RM and RD may have justifiable grudges against the parents, large corporations are driven by profit.  Though it may seem personal to victims of Hacked Off etc, it rarely is.  News has a high speed turnover,  while those who had their moment in the spotlight are nursing their wounds or celebrating their success, the news desks have already moved on.

 

But you raised a very important question Bjorn, why do journalists, investigative or otherwise, steer clear of the Madeleine case?  In a nutshell, it is a fast track to having your career and life ruined.  It wasn't only I who was attacked after giving that interview to the Sun, so was the reporter who interviewed me.  Sonia Poulton has had fought long and hard to expose the deception surrounding the Madeleine affair, only to be met with brick wall after brick wall.  And my name has been trashed more than most, which is why I am still here speaking truth to power, I will never kowtow to them!

 

Apparently, if you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you become an expert, despite yourself, lol.  This is a new 'fact' for me, so I am having a lot of fun with it.  As a lifelong sufferer of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), to 10,000 hours, I say pah!  Which, by a happy turn of events, makes me an expert in many subjects.  Including this one!  Only a fellow OCD sufferer, would understand how many 'attempts' we make at reaching perfection.  Be it a bacon and egg quiche (still not succeeded :( ) or the perfect prose (still trying) solving a murder mystery or knitting a child's hat.  I am currently trying to find a way to ship dozens of woollen hats to refugees, I seem to be producing them on an industrial scale!

 

I digress.  The mystery remains.  Not the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance, but the mystery of everything that happened thereafter.

NO TO LEVESON TWO

 

Hacked Off has quite rightly dropped off the public's radar - I think even it's most vociferous supporters can now see the dangers their demands posed to Freedom of Speech.  It simply isn't possible for journalists to do their jobs if their investigations are bound up by draconian rules and regulations that protect those being investigated.  We may not like the ways and means reporters get their stories, but we stomach it because they are the Fourth Estate, the people's protection against autocracy and corruption at the highest levels.

 

Earlier this month, the Courts ruled against an application by four prominent victims of phone hacking to go ahead with the 'promised' Leveson Inquiry Part II.  Gerry and Kate McCann were among the four.  Bizarre, because I thought Gerry and Kate would have had more than a bellyful of lawyers and court hearings, not to mention the ongoing enquiry into their daughter's disappearance, but there you go.  It would seem Gerry and Kate have been working quietly behind the scenes to silence the press and find ways in which to imprison journalists.  

 

Gerry and Kate feel that the news agencies and journalists have not been punished enough for their past misdemeanours, which probably translates to they haven't been compensated enough. And of course Leveson 2 promised to bring an opportunity for law enforcement to clamp down on social media. That massive thorn in the McCanns' side that opened the British public's eyes to the alternative narrative to Madeleine's disappearance - the not abducted one put forward by the Portuguese police.

 

The truth is Gerry and Kate were amply compensated by several large news agencies, apologies were given, and all these years on the tabloids and the MSM continue to treat these eternal victims with kid gloves, even though the McCanns were not themselves hacked, or so they claim.  The McCanns beef with the press, is 'press intrusion' - even though it was they who invited the press in!  A fact that did not go overlooked by the Portuguese Supreme Court.

 

I'm afraid the McCanns' endeavours to silence the media, both mainstream and social, is one of the reasons I continue to oppose them online.  Their need for vengeance against their enemies sends chills through me, though I do have a smidgeon of admiration that this tiny pair would take on Rupert Murdoch and Richard Desmond.  But, such is life, when they bit the hands that fed them, they fell off the front pages and their popularity nosedived. 

 

Imprisoning journalists is a bit like burning books.  It should shock and outrage every intelligent, educated, reasonable, adult.  Throughout history, reporters have had to go into areas where angels fear to tread. They protect our democracy, and the best example we have right now is Trump.  It feels as if every journalist in the USA is working night and day to expose every sordid, murky deal this 'president' has done, this is the Fourth Estate in action.

 

Presumably the McCanns are not now being harassed by anyone, and if they were, I am sure we would know about it.  This, it would appear is an old grievance, a bit like their grievance against Goncalo Amaral.  Punishing news organisations and Goncalo Amaral for stories that have already been published, read, and mostly forgotten from almost a decade ago has no practical advantage for Gerry and Kate whatsoever, none that I can see anyway.  If it is their reputations they are protecting, why bring those 'salacious' stories back into the public spotlight? 

 

Not surprisingly, this further Court loss of the McCanns didn't make it to the tabloids via the faithful Tracey.  Why?  Because it is not a popular cause and never will be.