A thread to discuss DEVELOPMENTS regarding Maddie McCann

[jampot]

We can discuss parenting styles in a few weeks

I agree with sophable you cannot be grief stricken for someone elses child.You are cheapening the pain of her parents who are truly grief stricken.You can sympathise and feel horror at the act but to put yourself in tyhe same emotional place as her family is laughable and frankly attention seeking

well thank god. some people with the sense they were born with.

Indeed, cheapening the pain. Quite agree but that's what tabloids are all about, IMHO, they cheapen everything in order to shift newspapers!

and it was me talking about the name Madeleine, Enid. the only possible excuse, however, is that Little Maddy will fit across two lines of a tabloid headline where Madeleine won't. so she was bound to be re-named, in a way. no excuse for James/Jamie Bulger though. what shocked me was the way everyone on here latched onto it so quickly, despite the fact that the parents (whose every move has been watched on this thread) have never referred to her as anything other than Madeleine. that's what made me think that there was some over-identifying going on...

The newspapers could do all the things like 'exposure' when it is genuinely to aid the investigation without the obvious manipulating of people's emotions. They're like vultures. It makes me feel so sick.

I've been thinking about this case such a lot. Yes, because it really does feel like it could happen to someone you know. And yes, because I've sometimes had nightmares about something like this happening to dd.

But the pain the family is going through is totally their own. This thread would be fine if it was really to discuss 'developments' when people feel like this story is playing on their minds so much that they need to discuss it. But some of the earlier comments involving speculation about paedophiles etc. is just totally wrong. As is taking on the grief of the family.

noddy I have to agree with you

although that may upset people

thing is, though, the press does what the press does. if it helps the investigation and gets the wee girl back her parents won't care.

but how exactly is this thread helping? and yet some of the people on here have behaved in the most exploitative and salacious manner, purloining the emotions of a terrified family and endlessly speculating over no developments whatsoever. a thread with this title should be one of the shortest ever on MN...

ah but are you not a journalist aitch ?

oh yes, i am, although strictly broadsheet. i don't like the way that the tabloid press in particular responds to these stories but i wanted to address the fact that people on here were saying the press was helping get the girl's name and face seen so therefore helping.

fair enough, i can perhaps see that point. but how is this thread helping, how is it defensible? that's my question.

But the people who are keeping this thread at the top of active convos are the one's who think it shouldn't be here!

I happen to agree with you in many ways, but I don't feel the need to keep banging on about it.

Really have you nothing better to do than hash over other people's reactions to all this. Can't you see that that is as vulture like as the behaviour you claim to dislike!

It's very easy to say newspapers could do more but unless people buy them it wouldn't do any good, therefore they write in a way so people buy them. The only way to stop them acting in this way is to not buy the newspapers or magazines - and lets be honest - who hasn't bought Heat or Now because there's a gossipy story you want to read?
There are some very talented journalists around, and they are not all vultures, so please don't generalise.

Aitch, this thread is 'helping' those who can't stop thinking about this case. Some people are probably genuinely upset by it, some are enjoying some rather nasty speculation.

i dont know how it helps when you put it that way, comparable to her face being seen etc, but people like to discuss this sort of thing dont they?
it is a parenting issue no?

basically what i'm saying is that there's no way of blaming the tabloid press for this thread without simultaneously declaring yourself to be a mindless drone with no capacity to see past the end of your own bleeding heart.

If someone is holding the little girl, the more intensive the press is, the more likely they are to get scared and kill her, if they havent allready, but then if there is nothing in the press then they may feel free to do what they like and think that they have got away with it

Umm, Aitch, is anybody blaming the tabloid press for this thread?!

Maybe in a roundabout way in that the tabloid press encourages us to turn someone's grief into a communal mourning like with Diana?

charlotte, the point is that the press can report the needed information but they don't have to milk the case so emotionally do they? How does that help?

dogsbollox, i don't agree. if it's become a debate about what's tasteless and not tasteless behaviour then that's fine, imo. that's what happens on MN all the time.

Incidentally I've always worried about the 'press exposure' side of things. Isn't too much press information likely to make a guilty person panic and do something they might not otherwise have done? Is over-exposure by the press proven to help?

i have not seen the papers. what arethey saying/printing?
someone please tell me.

i have not seen the papers. what arethey saying/printing?
someone please tell me.

It sells papers, and at the end of the day that is all that matters to the press. If the family were lower class and in a cheap resort then they would be being villified, so the sympathy that the papers are giving them because they are decent, hard working caring parents is nice.

Today's 'development {hmm] has been totally sensationalised.

The police were asked if they knew if Madeleine was still alive. The police said they couldn't know whether she was alive or dead. The media reports "Portuguese Police say that Maddie could be dead!"

People's hunger for more and more news on this is getting out of control. There will be no more news until she is found.

insofar as people were saying things like 'the papers say x, i feel sick etc', imaginary. anyway, really got to go to the park.