Madeleine McCann: Michaela Walczuch At The Door, JonBenet Ramsey And Metodo 3 ‘A Pup’
MADDY WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
SUNDAY MIRROR: “Did they want my girl?”
Karen Sixsmith is in conversation with the Mirror. It is an “EXCLUSIVE”. She is in an apartment at the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz. It is a month before Madeleine McCann went missing
A woman knocks at her door. She claims to be a Jehovah’s Witness. “German-born” Michaela Walczuch is a Jehovah’s Witness, or has been. The “mysterious woman” at the door is with a man.
Says Sixsmith: “It was a blonde woman, 35 to 40 years old, English-speaking. She had a pamphlet and I knew straight away that she was a Jehovah’s Witness. She asked if she could come into the apartment to talk about her faith. I took the pamphlet from her and closed the door. I now think it may have been Murat and his girlfriend”
Michaela Walczuch is 34
Karen has a daughter called Kate – “Kate is strikingly similar to Madeleine…Kate would have stood out a mile with her blonde hair and blue eyes - just like Madeleine”
Says the Mirror: “Her testimony - given to the Sunday Mirror so we could pass it on to the McCanns’ private investigators Metodo 3 in Barcelona”
NEWS OF THE WORLD: “Snatch bid last year at Maddie flat”
“A man tried to kidnap a child at the same apartment Madeleine McCann vanished from SIX MONTHS before she went missing,” says a British nanny who “caught the pervert trying to climb in through the ground floor window while a baby slept inside”
DAILY EXPRESS: “BABYSITTER SAW WINDOW MAN”
A source says “A babysitter has given detectives a statement in which she claims she caught a man trying to climb in through a window of apartment 5A – the apartment later occupied by the McCanns”
THE PEOPLE: “SICKENING SMEAR CAMPAIGN - FAMILY’S EMOTIONAL PLEA FOR MISSING DAUGHTER’S RETURN”
“Cops spent days investigating a theory the couple did it because they were desperate for cash”
It is a “sickening smear” making headlines in Portuguese paper 24 Horas
“NO QUIZ FOR MURAT LOVE” - Tuck Price, “a pal of German born Walczuch”, reveala: “I know for sure she’s been going to her Jehovah’s meetings and I know for sure the police haven’t contacted her. If this was true I’m sure the police would have been on to her”
“Find Maddie and give us a miracle for Christmas..” - “Maddie’s grandfather Brian Healy revealed how the family are convinced that she is alive and how they are now hoping for the ultimate Christmas miracle.” Says he: “We will all buy her a Christmas present and they will be under the tree waiting for her when she comes home”
GLASGOW SUNDAY MAIL: “Fury Over ‘Maddie Sold’ Slur”
An “outrageous slur”
A source says: “For several days the judicial police team investigated the possibility that the child had been sold by her own parents because of financial difficulties”
DAILY STAR: “MADDIE: 10 NEW SUSPECTS”
“Spanish investigators hunting for Madeleine McCann have narrowed their search to a hit list of ten paedophiles, we can reveal. Detectives working for the Metodo 3 agency are blitzing locations in Europe and Africa to find the known sex offenders”
Why this ten? Why ten?
Says Clarence Mitchell: “We have every confidence in Metodo 3. They can get to places faster and work quicker than anyone else and have the capacity to work worldwide”
BURNLEY EXPRESS: “Girls’ symbolic silence for Madeleine McCann”
Chelsea Gallagher and Gemma Lee, both 13, raised £450 for the Madeleine McCann Fund with a sponsored cuff-and-silence.
“For an entire school day, Chelsea and Gemma, 13, were handcuffed together and remained silent.” Says Chelsea: “The handcuffs symbolised the people who will be caught, and the silence because we haven’t heard anything about Madeleine”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann: is there no hope left?”
“Bristling with bravado before the television cameras last week, Francisco Marco, the portly boss of the Spanish-based detective agency Metodo 3, sneeringly dismissed the Portuguese police investigation into the disappearance of the couple’s daughter, Madeleine, as ”bumbling”, and boasted: ‘’We know who the kidnappers are and we are very, very close to catching them.’ Off camera, he admitted: ‘No, I can’t disclose any more yet. But I will be proved right.’”
Marco will get his man. A PI always does. Sign the contract. Pay the fee…
A source “close to” the McCanns says: ”The harsh fact is that they were pinning their remaining hopes on Marco’s outfit when they hired them on a six-month contract in September. But, in the past few weeks, they have conceded that they might have been sold a pup. There’s no doubt they’ve worked round the clock, but they don’t have a lot of experience with this type of investigation”
But there are for months left on the contract…
THE GUARDIAN: “Panorama walk-out over McCann film”
“Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer’s David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC’s flagship show”
Sensationalism? Tabloid journalism? Crime as entertainment?
Mills wrote a script. It was not used. “His original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents’ Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder…Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: ‘It’s a life-time damage. No question about it.’”
Posted: 25th, November 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (680) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
November 26th, 2007 at 12:32 am
589
Judith C
Sorry, I should have rephrased that. You don’t ask Stevo what your opinion is. You just look to see which way Stevo’s wind is blowing and then you just float along
November 26th, 2007 at 12:32 am
585 Abraham Zapruder
Totje 571
In the Ricky Holland case, all options were open at the six month stage. By the seven month stage, all options were closed bar one.
***********
Well, let’s hope this is going to happen in this case too. Too many conspiracy theories, hearsay, convicting people based on the papers, so called body-language (by amateurs wwrrrum!), how people look, how they don’t look, what they say, what they don’t say, what they do, what they don’t do…Shall I continue?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:31 am
sarah
your suggestion that us anti,
all looked up to him and agreed with him!
most of us churned it over , spat it out, but admired his work
but unlike the crap the media guffs up daily about sightings etc…
his was logical
and there was a unexplained dead body of a female 3 yr old
blonde hair, clothes similar to photos etc…..
and the very loud sound of SILENCE!
no spokesman saying “we our very sorry for………..”
he cant keep his mouth shut when the sightings are of alive temper tantrums in foreign countries!!
November 26th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Ian
I’m not quite sure how they lost their child “through their own mistake”, by which, I assume you mean by leaving their children alone in the apartment, which they should NOT have done as the grandmother honestly admitted.
But weren’t the children fine when left alone, as it turned out? There was no abductor after all, was there?
Kate or Gerry murdered her, didn’t they? Or one of them lost her/his temper and killed her by accident and then, together, they plotted (quickly) to dispose of her body (temporarily) so that she wouldn’t be found (by police they couldn’t know at the time would be so incompetent) and to move it 25 days later in a hire car so that it could be buried on the way, as it happened, to Huelva (knowing that John Corner, godfather to the twins and husband of Kate’s oldest friend, would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing) and, in the meantime, and equally quickly, they confessed their crime to a very accommodating priest (or two or three) who, despite never having met them before, agreed “just like that”, as Tommy Cooper might have said, to give them absolution and allow them to use his church whenever they wanted, even, if necessary, for moving the body from the freezer to his crypt. Any priest would have done as much for a tourist with a problem. Hospitable like that, these mediterranean types!
I wonder at what point they decided to cash in as well on that fatal accident by setting up the fund? Or did they plan all this even before they left home?
“Let’s kill her, fool everyone (with a daft story) that she was taken and then set up a fund. People all over the world are bound to fall for it. It’ll be worth it for an even better house.”
Or was it more,
“Well, she’s dead now. We’ve nothing much to do for a few weeks (apart from desperately trying to get people looking for her all over the world) till we manage to bury the body somewhere so we may as well cash in and get some money out of it as well. No point wasting time. We’ll have an even better house. Yeah!”
Actually Ian, I agree on the mortgage issue. Somehow it would have been different if they’d used it to pay the rent on the villa to enable them to stay in Portugal till the lease ran out. As it was, they used their savings for that which led to the two mortgage payments being made from the fund. Most unwise. However, remember that, reportedly, GM wanted to come back much earlier. Kate couldn’t bring herself to leave. Understandable perhaps. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he wanted to come back sooner, as well as trying to move on. Well, they are back now and he’s working, so it shouldn’t happen again.
Can’t have it both ways. Either she was taken but it serves them right because they left her, or she was fine when left alone, thank you, but killed, accidentally or on purpose, by one or both of her parents, or one or more of the tapas friends. Leaving her alone seems to have been the safest thing they could have done!
November 26th, 2007 at 12:27 am
565
yampster Says:
November 25th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
552
Judith C
You can bet that wherever she is it isn’t anywhere where they have subsequently led people. are we to believe that these people are stupid or do we think that the people who believe their press releases are stupid. Let me know as soon as Stevo tells you what your opinion is”
******************************************
I don’t recall the McCanns or their spokespeople ‘leading’ people to the Barragem de Bravura, do you? And what gives you the idea I ask Stevo for my opinion? Even he wouldn’t claim that. As for “stupid people”! — have you looked in the mirror lately?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:27 am
579 totje
And I bet he’s deciding which one of you poor suckers is in for a verbal beating? Thea fought back and got sent to Coventry by you cowards. Wonder which one of you will upset the great man next? Remember……..dog……….bone.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:25 am
from a Portuguese perspective…………………..Clarence Mitchell, a former spin-doctor from British Government, is a liar. Nothing new, because this is an essential characteristic for somebody who has this kind of job. The most recent lie was published today. Mr. Clarence Mitchell told the Mirror “Kate and Gerry have consistently said they are willing to co-operate with Portuguese authorities and will continue to do so, regardless of who is in charge of the hunt for Madeleine.”
The “debutant” - as Richard Branson called him - Portuguese lawyer Pinto de Abreu said exactly the opposite. So, one of them is a liar. I believe Mr. Pinto de Abreu told the truth, when he revealed that Kate McCann refused to answer several times, when questioned by Police. I don’t believe Mr. Clarence Mitchell, because his job has been – and still is – not to tell the truth, but to try to create the idea that truth is what better serves the interest of his bosses, whoever they are.
But the most interesting statement of Mr. Clarence Mitchell, the once powerful head of Media Monitoring Unit, was on GMTV: “What (the McCann) want now is whoever takes over to refocus the inquiry onto finding Madeleine.”
Meaning, what the McCann want is that Portuguese Police forgets the evidence collected by a British Police special team, working with the two most valuable and efficient sniffer dogs of all police forces in UK – Keela and Eddie – at Praia da Luz.
What the McCann want, according to Clarence Mitchell, is that Portuguese Police start to pretend that it is a strong possibility that Madeleine McCann is alive – a theory that goes against the results of the analysis of the samples collected by the British Police special team at Praia da Luz - analysis done at Forensic Science Service, in Birmingham.
But Clarence Mitchell is doing his job. That’s what is paid for, by the several British millionaires that are the financial supporters of the McCann. What I don’t understand is why the answer for the challenges and threats coming from the McCann has been the silence, coming from the Portuguese Prime-Minister, Mr. José Sócrates, from the Chairman of the Supreme Magistrates Council, Judge Noronha do Nascimento, from the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Service, Mr. Pinto Monteiro and from the director of Policia Judiciária, Mr. Alípio Ribeiro (pictured above…)
Are they afraid of the McCann? Are they afraid of who is behind the McCann? I can’t believe they are. I can’t accept they are. But I can’t understand why they have been so silent, month after month of an amazing campaign of slur, slander, calumny, defamation and insult to all the institutions those persons represent: our Nation, our Judicial system, our Courts, our Public Prosecutor’s Office and our Police.
I never heard a word of Mr. Alípio Ribeiro defending one of his men, Criminal Coordinator Gonçalo Amaral. He never had the courage to come forward and say that he trusted the man who was in the spotlight, the nº 1 target of British tabloid’s journalists (*), people that behave like a pack of hyenas and have to lick each other for mutual reconnaissance, in order to avoid episodes of cannibalism.
When you are in command and you don’t take care of your men, you risk to lose the battle. Because your men don’t trust you. If you want to lead, you have to be the first to move forward and face the enemy. If you do that, your men will fight and die for you. But even if you stay in the comfort and cosiness of your command post, at the top of your ivory tower, while your men are struggling in the trenches, you can be sure they will do their job. They have a mission and a duty, and that’s more important than the man that, by accident, happens to be their commander. A man that never had his shoes in the mud, never smelled a rotten body, never heard the noise of bullets passing by.
But when those men finish their job, they will come for you. They will ask you where you have been, when they needed you. Why you left them alone. They will demand answers. Hope you have a good one. You will need it. You and all the others that have been in such a comfortable silence, until now, as if you have nothing to do with what is going on at Praia da Luz.
Paulo Reis
(*) Mr. Grant Hodgson, from the Mirror, is a man that considers himself a journalist – an obvious mistake. He calls me with regularity, like many other British journalists – and I wouldn’t mention their names, as most of them are good professionals. And we just talk, between journalists, about the last gossips, information, recente news and so on.
Some of them ask me for help in clarifying aspects of the Portuguese legal system, others want more details about news that were published in the Portuguese Press. A few of them proposed me money in exchange for information and other usual unethical procedures, quite common among British tabloid journalists. Brendan de Beer, who works for a English language publication in Algarve, once called me asking who where my sources in the Police…
Last time Mr. Hodgson called me, he asked my opinion about the picture of Madeleine, in Morocco. I reminded him of the many sightings in Malta and I told him that everybody should be careful with those sightings. I gave him an example: the president of Portuguese Detectives Union told, during a TV program, on September 11, that Polícia Judiciária had to investigate and send teams to 252 different places where aleged sightings of Madeleine have been reported, only in Portugal, between May 3 and September 11. “Amazing” - he said.
And what did this “journalist” wrote, next day? He wrote this piece of fake, misleading and manipulated information: “The Sunday Mirror has discovered that 252 possible tip-offs about the four-year-old have been reported to Amaral, any one of which might just lead to her being traced. But the vast majority have not even been checked.”
Posted by Paulo Reis at 10:23:00 PM
November 26th, 2007 at 12:23 am
576
Abraham Zapruder
Thanks for that.
PDFs….if only!
Will take a look at the Holland story tomorrow.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Totje 571
In the Ricky Holland case, all options were open at the six month stage. By the seven month stage, all options were closed bar one.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:22 am
MADDIE ‘SOLD’ BY HARD-UP MCCANNS
ABOVE: Portuguese police have come up with a new bizarre claim to Madeleine’s disappearance26th November 2007 By Jerry Lawton Your Shout
MADELEINE McCann’s parents were last night reeling from a bombshell new police theory that they SOLD their little girl.
Detectives have investigated whether GP Kate and heart consultant Gerry, both 39, traded their daughter to bail themselves out of money trouble.
They initially probed the astonishing allegation before the couple were named suspects.
And they reportedly returned to it after discovering the McCanns had twice had to dip into the Find Madeleine fund to pay their £2,000-a-month mortgage.
The new police chief in charge of the inquiry, Paulo Rebelo, looked into it as part of his “root and branch’’ review of the case.
Last night the allegation was branded as “laughable’’ by the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell.
He said: “The suggestion that Kate and Gerry somehow have sold off their beloved daughter takes the ludicrous allegations circulating around this case to a new level of lunacy.
“It is laughable to even suggest it.
“Kate and Gerry understand the police must consider all possibilities – no matter how apparently implausible – in order to eliminate them.
“But if they have considered this for more than a nano-second then they have wasted their time.
“It is, of course, entirely untrue. Madeleine was abducted.’’
Rebelo has reportedly rejected the theory again following his review of the evidence.
It was dismissed after checks on the couple’s finances revealed they earned a combined salary of £120,000 and owned a £650,000 luxury detached home in Rothley, Leics.
Four-year-old Madeleine has not been seen since she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3 while her parents dined with pals in a tapas bar 75 yards away.
————————————————————–
why need money for mortgage payments then?
whats that for pro rata?
6 months on 6 months off?
1 day?
3 days?
full duty?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Now we hear a predator had been trying to get into the apartment, by climbing. Why didn’t he just open the door - go in quietly. Go up the back steps where no-one could see him. Jump through the window. Lot of hogwash this is. If there had been a predator the police would have been notified and the whole holiday complex would have been notified and management would have done something surely, with security, ie. CCTV cameras. Have they - holiday complex done anything about the latest “abduction”.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:21 am
578
aMcCannsupporter
Wow! cut and paste. They have trained you really well. You don’t have to convince the few who post on this board. You have to convince 73.7 % who believe that they have something to answer for
November 26th, 2007 at 12:21 am
570 Brandon Flours
What makes you believe that anybody anti Stevo is pro mcCann? I am definitely on the side of Madeleine and truth. I just prefer to trust my own intellect, rather than some conceited megalomaniacs. Don’t want to follow the allocated theory of the week. What has the wonder boy picked for this week? Bet he’s swotting up on it now!
November 26th, 2007 at 12:18 am
578
aMcCannsupporter Says:
November 26th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Please read and digest, the more intelligent of you may be persuaded to alter your opinions ….
———————————————————-
A more intelligent McCann supporter would have realised that it has been considered…
November 26th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Now be nice to Stevo. I didn’t agree with his theory (you can check that for yourself), but I appreciate he made an effort to help. Though he and others sometimes got to much emotions involved, thus causing a - sometimes very heavvy- battle of words. Case closed.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Please read and digest, the more intelligent of you may be persuaded to alter your opinions ….
Panorama walk-out over McCann film
Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer’s David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC’s flagship show
David Rose
The Observer Sunday November 25 2007
In the credits at the end of last week’s Panorama special on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one name was conspicuous by its absence - that of David Mills, the programme’s original producer. His name had disappeared from the end credits despite the fact that it was his company, Mills Productions, that had done all the research and was responsible for bringing the exclusive footage at the film’s heart to the BBC.
Two weeks before transmission last Tuesday, Mills - one of Britain’s most respected documentary-makers, who in his 40-year career has made 120 investigative films for broadcasters including the BBC, Granada, Thames and America’s CBS - walked out of the programme after a furious row with Panorama’s editor, Sandy Smith, over the programme’s approach and argument.
He then wrote a stinging email to the BBC attacking Panorama for losing its journalistic passion. It has created a stir in the media world, mixing as it does the controversial issues of the McCanns and how their story is covered, journalistic balance and television current affairs.
‘I had written a draft script and had already been told it was compelling,’ Mills said. ‘Sandy turned up with a completely different version and basically imposed it on me. I told him, “I cannot edit the film to this: it’s a completely different show, and I’m not going to do it.” To have this happening is very depressing.’
The incident - one of several controversies Panorama has faced this year - suggests, Mills said, that ‘the BBC is no longer interested in serious current affairs’. BBC sources confirmed last night that the decisions about the programme’s shape had been taken ‘close to the top’ of the BBC management hierarchy - which has already conducted a series of internal meetings over how the corporation should approach McCann case coverage in general.
As one of those interviewed by Mills and the programme’s reporter, Richard Bilton, I can attest to how different the programme shown was to what they told me less than a month ago that they were envisaging. Along with The Observer’s Ned Temko, who has covered the case for this newspaper, I ended up on the cutting-room floor. At that stage - as Mills’s draft script makes plain - his intention was to make an analytical, investigative programme that would have been very critical of the Portuguese police, not only for the errors in their investigation, but for their apparent campaign of disinformation designed to put pressure on Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. It would also have criticised both the local and British press over allegations that they recycled unfounded rumours with little sign of fact-checking or detachment.
It would, as Mills confirmed again yesterday, have scrutinised the various allegations that have been floated against the McCanns and concluded they are baseless: ‘We had an investigative team looking into the story for weeks. Our assessment was that the purported DNA evidence was weak and inconclusive, while so far as we could tell the supposedly significant “discrepancies” between the stories told by the McCanns’ friends about the night of Madeleine’s disappearance amount to very little indeed.’
The original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents’ Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder. Mills’s version of the McCann Panorama featured an interview - eventually not used - with JonBenet’s father, John, in which he said that the Colorado police ‘did a great job of convincing the media and the world that we were guilty, but they couldn’t charge us, because of course they had no case’. Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: ‘It’s a life-time damage. No question about it.’
The programme on the McCanns that was broadcast by Panorama was much less ambitious. It recited the case both for and against the McCanns, but had nothing harsh to say about either the police or the media. It did include new material, including a video diary shot of the McCanns in Portugal by their friend John Corner - footage that had been acquired by Mills and had led to his company getting the BBC commission.
It also cast doubt on some of the wilder claims published by the tabloids, and contained the first interview with Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns’ companions on the holiday in Praia de Luz last May, who said that she was certain she had seen a girl who looked like Madeleine being carried in the street by a strange man around the time she is thought to have disappeared. But the programme avoided firm conclusions.
Having handed the film’s editing over to a colleague, Mills emailed Smith on Monday, the day before transmission, saying he felt compelled to remove both his name and his company’s from the credits. ‘In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with,’ the email said. ‘In part, too, my decision reflects the programme’s intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian, extended news report is shameful.
‘But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns… The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved.’
Mills had been working closely with a CBS team, which also used the video diary footage. They, he told Smith, had concluded it was ‘ludicrous’ and ‘crazy’ to think the McCanns could have caused the death or disappearance.
Smith emailed Mills back, accusing him of wanting to broadcast ‘advocate journalism’, and pointing out that the broadcast version did describe some of the allegations against the McCanns as ‘tenuous, to put it mildly’. Smith said that, while it was true that the programme ‘changed substantively,’ this was because ‘it is a current affairs programme and it was overtaken by events’. He added: ‘To get Jane Tanner and some of the McCann family meant that some of the other stuff moved to the edge, and the original version was just not journalistically as important.’
Mills disagrees. ‘So far as I can see, investigative journalism at the BBC is over,’ he said. ‘The broadcast script contains nuances that suggest that the McCanns still have a case to answer. The BBC should have had the courage to state that this is simply not so.’
Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who is the McCanns’ spokesman, said Kate and Gerry were ‘content’ with the broadcast version and accepted that events meant it had to change. He said they had spoken to Bilton and told him they considered the film to be ‘fair’.
Other McCann family members were less happy. John, Gerry’s brother, whose interview was broadcast, said: ‘It wasn’t the programme that I was told they were going to make. They’ve made something very different, and I am disappointed, because I’d hoped the full story was going to be told. Nevertheless I’m pleased they interviewed Jane Tanner. She said she saw Madeleine being abducted, and we want people to remember that.’
The row follows controversies over previous films this year, such as a report on Scientology by former Observer journalist John Sweeney, in which he lost his temper and turned - in his words - into an ‘exploding tomato,’ and a story claiming that wi-fi technology might be harmful, which was denounced by some scientists as ‘irresponsible’.
As someone who once spent a year reporting for Panorama myself, I know that no BBC programme is more closely scrutinised and, sometimes, fought over. The fact remains some of its most distinguished contributors, including Tom Mangold and John Ware, have left in recent years, and that it has been repeatedly accused of punching below its weight. Mills is not a marginal figure, and the CBS film with which he was collaborating was much firmer in its conclusion that the McCanns had to be innocent.
Last night the BBC hierarchy was closing ranks to resist Mills’s arguments. Outside the corporation, they may not be as easily dismissed.
‘Your programme verges on the dishonest’
From: David
Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12
To: ‘Sandy Smith’
Subject: credit
Dear Sandy,
As you know, in the end I felt I could not leave either my name or my company credit on the programme.
In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with.
In part, too, my decision reflects the programme’s intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian extended news report is shameful.
But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical; it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns. Our CBS colleagues concluded that it was ‘ludicrous’ and ‘crazy’ to think them involved and that … ‘the child was abducted’.
The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.
David Mills
November 26th, 2007 at 12:15 am
were their any ohio social workers in prai da luiz that week?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:14 am
568
How will it end? If I knew that I’d be a rich man. Call it wishful thinking, but my own hunch is that it will play out similar to the Ricky Holland case. That one only cracked when a serious rift developed between those at the very heart of the case. Maybe the PJ are thinking along the same lines, hence the “waiting game”, almost water torture. Sorry don’t have a link, but google on Tim Holland, Lisa Holland, Ricky Holland.
Personally I think it would help for more info to be put in the public domain, the secrecy stuff has been a major cause of all the red herrings and media nonsense. Let’s have the sworn statements of the T9, the nannies, aerobics instructor, Mrs Fenn, waiters etc, all up on the PJ website in downloadable pdf format! TB would be front of the queue methinks…
November 26th, 2007 at 12:12 am
“The girl’s mother and stepfather reportedly told family members that she was taken in July by someone claiming to be an Ohio social worker. But they never told police she was missing.
Galveston County sheriff’s spokesman Ray Tuttoilmondo says Kimberly Trenor and Royce Zeigler have been charged with injury to a child and tampering with evidence.”
———————————————————-
how could people do that?
yes its quite common really
November 26th, 2007 at 12:09 am
569
soothsayer Says:
Hang on, I thought I was wobbler watson but it’s my day off
November 26th, 2007 at 12:09 am
569 soothsayer
Not the wobbler! Not me! I take it you’re not in the Band of Stevo’s Brothers and Sister? The Yes, Sir Gang?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:06 am
God bless Baby Grace,does mans inhumanity know no bounds.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:06 am
562 Abraham Zapruder
Totje 491 said:
edit..
The real wind-up is the abduction. There wasn’t one.
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How do you KNOW? You/we might suspect, Tanners interview seems to contradict earlier stories printed by the papers. But who knows how correct they quoted her? They surely aren’t famous by quoting people literally! Did they even speak to her in person? Nevertheless in my opinion all options stay open untill the PJ interrogates the T9 again and brings charges.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Is Gerry your stevo?
dont tarr us with your own brush
we all came on here because we realised the press and media are talking bias bollox
Stevo is a newey!
wheres your lots new sighting going to be this week?
Iceland?
or is that where deals for kates advertising expertise?
can just imagine her
mums gone to iceland! aaaaaaahhhh perfect
kerry katona get your coat
November 26th, 2007 at 12:05 am
566/Sarah watch out you will get acussed of being me,could be worse it could be wobbler watson.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:03 am
562
Abraham Zapruder Says:
You bet it helps! But Team McCann cannot afford to lose the abduction story.
Everything they’ve said is built around it.
How’s it going to end?
November 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am
the twins will choose their care home
November 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Wait for tomorrow. Now Baby Grace theory is no more, your gracious leader will issue new instructions and avenues you may pursue. Brown noses at the ready! Form an orderly line! You needn’t worry your pretty empty heads as the Main Man will point you in the next direction he has already planned for his site.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
552
Judith C
You can bet that wherever she is it isn’t anywhere where they have subsequently led people. are we to believe that these people are stupid or do we think that the people who believe their press releases are stupid. Let me know as soon as Stevo tells you what your opinion is
November 25th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
559 Châtelaine :
edit
—Yep
Management = anticipation
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Most managers fail though
Kunnen we eens mailen?