Madeleine Coverage

OK, sorry - did not mean any harm to anyone...

Well Said. Madeleine is NOT OBVIOUSLY dead. Please keep any arm chair jury thoughts to yourself. We're discussing the presentation of the story on the news.

OK, sorry - did not mean any harm to anyone...

We're discussing the presentation of the story on the news.

McCann Appeal advertisment: Madeleine McCann has just turned four years old, but her parents weren't around to share this special day. On Thursday 3rd May she was snatched from their rented apartment in Portugal. She has not been seen since. Please help us find her. Keep a lookout for anything suspicious. Be alert. She has a distinctive mark in her right eye. Download this poster of her, display it in as many places that you can think of. For anyone with valid information, there's a 2.6-million pound reward. Maddie's parents may be devastated, but they haven't given up hope. We shouldn't either...

Antony Funnell: For anyone who remembers the Lindy Chamberlain case, it has eerie similarities. The hunt for a missing child, a media circus and a mother who's been continually criticised in the press for not seeming to publicly grieve enough.

We've seen a bit of here in Australia, but in Britain and Europe it's dominated the media for months. And it's taken on a bizarre nature, with Madeleine McCann's parents embarking on a European media tour and being surrounded by PR practitioners of all description. In fact, just this week they hired a new spokesperson, a former senior BBC journalist.

Well one of those who's been following it all with interest is London-based Mark Borkowski. Mr Borkowski has a good understanding of the way such media events can spin, because aside from being a media commentator, he's also the Managing Director of a successful British PR company.

Mark Borkowski: They played the story, day in, day out. They've got some very clever people to support and help them, and they've used the 24/7 global media to get this to find their missing child. The web, traditional media, non-traditional media, have embraced their hunger, their thirst, their longing, to get that child back. And they created a photo opportunity every day while they were away, and they stayed put, and they were full-on with the media, playing with the media agenda. And of course let's not forget it, it was what we call in this country, particularly in Europe, the 'silly season' when there isn't so many, sort of huge news stories breaking, and it tied in to that too.

Antony Funnell: And was it the fact that they were so slick, in a sense, in handling the media, was that what got them in trouble, or what's got them in trouble now, in terms of media perceptions?

Mark Borkowski: I think that the Portuguese law works in a totally different way, particularly to the way that the law and investigations happen perhaps in the UK.
The turnings and machinations of that took a long time to come out, particularly in the UK where the heart of the story was there, there was a pretty xenophobic approach to the way the Portuguese police are treating this case. So when you are using the media, they're looking for the story, and sometimes that story isn't one that you want magnified, and the day that they were taken in for questioning, things sort of changed because the story took another twist.

It's been a soap opera in our life. When you use the media to the full extent, then those things can be switched against you. And it is difficult for people, particularly with the British media, to see such positive media turning against you. It's a very, very bitter pill to swallow, to find all this support, all of a sudden the suspicion is against you. And of course the media are reporting the story, and the bull was then taken on by the Portuguese media and also the Portuguese police, and they tried to posit their own stories of their own suspicions.

Antony Funnell: Well I read recently that the Portuguese police are basically watching the news coverage out of Britain on an almost hourly basis to see how it's been reported.

Mark Borkowski: I think it's the world. This story certainly has gripped most of Europe, and here we are talking on another continent, another side of the world, another time zone. So obviously everybody's affected. But let's not forget the media, the BBC, CNN, all the news corporations, even al-Jazeera, centre around distribution systems that come out of the web. We can follow the BBC news channel 24/7, Sky, therefore they are setting the agenda, and a story that might change hourly is reported minute by minute, and that changes the swing of the pendulum, away from you, for you. In the last two days the McCanns camp, they've employed some very meaty corporate PR company based in the UK who have gone to all the people who perhaps are wavering, and hammered home the point, hammered home the inaccuracies in some of the reporting, and it's a case now where you're seeing two heavyweights slugging it out, dealing with the facts and trying to destabilise much of the innuendo that surrounds this family.

Antony Funnell: And it very much is a PR campaign too, isn't it, because I read Richard Branson has got involved, not only giving over money to help the McCanns but also to fund their PR efforts.

Mark Borkowski: Well he funded their legal efforts, I think the reporting; he's created a fund, some of that will go into the PR company's coffers, but they need it, this is a very big campaign, and at times obviously they're very well funded. A lot of people have responded to their plight, a lot of people still give money to them. A lot of people feel they're innocent and they want to fight for them, and it's encouraging.

I sometimes question perhaps if they weren't from the cultural perhaps even if you say an old-fashioned word, the class background they're from, if they were an impoverished family, perhaps from a poorer part of the country, would they have had the same sort of sympathy, but perhaps because they're middle class and they're doctors, professional people, they're gathering that support, where other people perhaps haven't had the ability to have such an open fight.

Antony Funnell: Now just looking at the British government's involvement in all this, and I understand that the British Foreign Office organised for people to handle media relations on behalf of the McCann family very early on in the piece, the day after Madeleine went missing, in your experience is it unusual for a government to organise PR like that?

Mark Borkowski: Yes, it's very, very unusual, and again, I think it was reflecting who they were, where they were, and the predicament they found themselves in, and to a certain extent initially they were quite lucky. But obviously they had some friends, and we all need friends in certain connected places, and it became a political issue. I think the local MP lobbied for them pretty hard, the local church, senior figures all represented their case and tried to finance it. A huge media story like this does need handling.

Antony Funnell: And given the nature of the coverage over the last week or so particularly, do you think there was an obligation on the McCanns PR advisers to warn them about the high price of using the media?

Mark Borkowski: I hope that they did warn them that this is a double-headed sort of beast. But it's very difficult to prepare people, particularly when you're riding on the crest of a wave of such help, such support, such public outpourings that you don't see the downside. You're focusing on moment by moment and you're living in hope on this occasion, hopefully that the child will be spotted somewhere from this publicity. Celebrity endorsements, David Beckham, Renaldo, the other soccer star who plays for Man. United based in the UK, all these people were behind it, and it takes you into a certain sort of false sense of security. And it's difficult for a team of people to continually remind people that this thing might turn sour. But even so, that was an overwhelming way to find themselves changing where they were victims, to actually suspects.

Antony Funnell: And just finally, I mean this huge campaign, the media coverage associated with it, Madeleine may never be found, her body, or she may never ever be found; is there any possibility now, given the way it's developed, that the family can expect any right to privacy over the coming years?

Mark Borkowski: There has to be some sort of denouement for them to try and go back to any sense of normality, but trust me, their life will never be normal again. The price of this fame is that you are public property, and you can ask and plea for privacy, no quarter will be given.

Hopefully this child will be found, we all want to see a positive outcome for this, but even then, that story will always be there, you'll always be the subject of intrusion, that is, if that is the case, if we're looking on the positive side of this, this is another residue of that horrendous night back in May. But privacy is perhaps something that they can't ask for.

Antony Funnell: Mark Borkowski, speaking to me there from a busy office in London.

And that's The Media Report for another week. Andrew Davies is the program's producer; technical production by Peter McMurray.

Very well produced segment on the media frenzy of the Madeline McCann coverage, from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DO9sNoWSVN8

And yet the media still won't learn! Anyhow, I now await Harry Hill's take on it all!

Just thought I'd mention the many motives News 24 have gone to warn us that the McCann's were giving their first TV interview (really?)...