To be shocked at Sky News' coverage of the excavations in Praia Da Luiz?

[ziggiestardust]

I didn't see a lot of the initial coverage, as I was working abroad in 2007. But the Police are potentially excavating a little girl's body, regardless of the circumstances, and they've got live cameras at the scene, waiting. It's macabre, and it seems like regardless of the fact MM was a tiny little defenceless girl, she's fair game for the media.

I just think it's shitty. Do a quick piece on it, but is there any need for the close ups of the excavation site and a blow by blow account of what's happening?

Her poor family

It's not news coverage. It's voyeurism.

It's saying look, look, look...

Can you imagine what it must be like excavating for the remains of a little girl knowing this is also entertainment?

It allows people to idly discuss the horrible death of a child online, it allows them to position themselves as somehow 'better' than the bereaved parents and others to rush in with a 'development' thus feeling important.

It's vacuous nonsense.

The problem is that it invites us to view this horror as entertainment. Every time a person interacts with an event like this as a piece of entertainment, they are learning to look at tragedy and alienate themselves from it. How else.could you survive the onslaught of horror, except by closing yourself down to it? We're learning to witness tragedy and be passive, or to treat it salaciously. It's hardly what you'd choose to cultivate at a societal level, surely - passivity and voyeurism? We shut ourselves down to empathy, or we wouldn't be able to tolerate the sheer unrelenting horror of it all. I don't think that's something we should be indifferent to or unconcerned by, after all, it could be anyone of us who is next to be photographed instead of helped at the scene of our own tragedy.

I think we should be questioning a commitment to providing news 24/7 as it constantly raises questions about quality control.

As to whether any developments in the MM case are news - of course, they are. It has been a major news story since it happened for a number of valid reasons: the awfulness of the incident; the PR campaign by the family; the unprecedented involvement by government and the major spend of public funds. For all those reasons, current developments are legitimate news. That's not to say we need updates 24/7 to say nothing has happened.

tbh if I was MM's family, the news coverage would be irrelevant to my torment. I'd have taken steps to ensure I only received official updates from the official channels and wouldn't care about how often Sky said 'there's nothing to report'.

It's vacuous nonsense

I agree, but as someone who has been on vacuous death watch duty I despise people like you bogqueen slightly ahead of my viewers/readers and just shaving it ahead of the people who are paying my wages.

Sleep tight.

I've always been of the thought that a great number of the negative comments against the McCanns comes from a sense of misguided self-preservation. That a parent's worst nightmare couldn't possible happen to them because they're better parents etc.

I can't help feeling finding a body would enable the McCanns to grieve properly and get some closure, I cannot imagine living in 7 years of such painful limbo

If a body is found, the McCannes will still not be allowed to grieve in privacy.

The news crew will be at the funeral, recording live with a few spread sheet in the paper.

The media isn't there to keep people informed, they are a business and it's sole purpose is to make money.

Limited - I worked as a journalist fir many years and did plenty of 'death knocks' and have sat with news teams watching live coverage.

I now work for the emergency services. Why on earth would you despise me?

Agree Fleta.

How many of us have done something which we could have later lamented over? There was a thread, not long ago, asking such.

Hi all.
Thanks to those who've reported posts upthread that they feel break our talk guidelines.

Clearly the OP wanted to start a discussion about the media coverage of this case, so please do feel free to contribute to that topic.

However, we are in the process of deleting any posts that imply that Madeleine's parents were involved in her disappearance, so please don't speculate on that subject or we will have to delete the whole thread. We're here to support parents, all parents.

Thanks for your understanding.

I don't understand what point people who go on (and on) about the Mccanns leaving the children alone are trying to make. Its a fact. It's not in dispute.

Does it mean that we should just shrug our shoulders and possibly leave a dangerous person on the loose, on the lookout for other children to take?

How would that help anyone?

Then if you'e done fatals - we didn't call them death knocks - bogqueen then presumably understand the score. It's not something we enjoyed. It was something to be done.

Mostly the people I knocked on weren't hostile. They were numb. If they didn't want to talk, they didn't want to talk. There have been people who didn't want to talk to me.

But some of them were welcoming. After all, when your son has died in a road accident celebrating being the first person in the family getting into university, what would you do except invite the polite girl from the local paper in, ask her to take her shoes off and show him into his bedroom plastered with his hopes and dreams that aren't ever going to come true?

Do you get what I felt? And do you get the privilege I got from those people?

If you don't understand that, that's what I despise.

Not watching the whole mm story doesn't feel right for me. Something doesn't add up. I really hope they find mm but sadly I suspect this beautiful little girl died that night. Such an awful story and hope if anyone has been Nasty to this baby they get a punishment. I feel so awful for her younger brother and sister and hope against hope she's found alive and well. I don't comment on another mm post. X

So the locals are not at all worried by all these children going missing? I don't think I would settle for just putting posters up at the beach!

And actually that's a rather unkind post Limited

It is vacuous to devote hours of airtime to a process which is deeply unpleasant and adds nothing to the story. It's voyeuristic. It's indefensible. Sure the story needs to be covered but to suggest the media is buzzing about in helicopters in order to make sure the job is done properly is.. Well.. It's not really true is it.

From your post I understand you are personally in Praia de luz watching the work. It's a pretty grim assignment although much more grim fur the people directly involved.

On the day if the Paddington rail crash I visited eight houses of the deceased and afterwards I really questioned what I was doing as a journalist. To me it felt morally indefensible.

Anyway am tired as have spent a nightshift talking to people who are unwell and one sexual deviant at 2am.

And I don't see any correlation between Sky's news coverage and a tribute piece in the paper. The two are not the same at all.

thebogqueen I was sat in the break room at work and it came on. I started this thread in response to how I felt it was reported, which is what an online forum is all about.

The news coverage is good, it's what the parents want. This case would have faded away and their daughter been forgotten by everyone apart from her family if it weren't for the media lapping it up. Her parents have worked tirelessly to court the media, to keep the public interested there by pressurising the authorities to get the investigation going again. I just hope for their sake they get the answers they so desperately need.

Thanks MNHQ

And actually that's a rather unkind post Limited

And I think you should step away bogqueen and refrain from being unpleasant about me.

BTW at the Clapham rail crash I didn't report, I gave blood. Do you want to play top trumps? Nighty night.

Sure. I'm sorry I didn't mean you personally op. It just angers me that this sort of coverage passes fir news journalism.

It's like... There's a story there which should be told but it need context, it needs critical thinking. It doesn't need endless hours of speculation which is then usually wrong anyway...it adds nothing.

I don't know whether MM was abducted or she died in an accident and I wish people wouldn't talk about her abduction as fact.It is a theory.

I don't know what the point of digging on the scrubland is.They used all this geo phys equipment there before and didn't find anything.And there one lead is seeing a man running towards the port carrying a child .

Limited - this isn't about you.

You started with a post telling me you 'despised' me. I 've told you that was 'unkind'

I've a right to say what I think about this. I'm sorry you are offended by that.

okay