Madeleine McCann: Britney Spears, Lolita And Birthday Cards
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
DAILY MAIL: “Woolworths forced to withdraw LOLITA bedroom furniture range for girls”
The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard designed for girls aged around six, retails on the Woolworths website for £349.99
The name has “sexual connotations”. A “mother” sees it and writes: “Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it’s bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named ‘Lolita’?”
Well, you don’t have to buy it…
A spokesman for the company says: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now”
Trusting Wikipedia for information has its own dangers. (And look out for an article on the state of British education.) But no danger is bigger than a bed named, perhaps, in honour of a charcter in a novel by Vladimir Nabokov
Or Lolita Fatjo, pre-production coordinator for Star Trek
Or many other women called Lolita
“On-line parent power has been growing in recent years. In 2006 Tesco stopped selling a pole-dancing kit on its website over accusations it was destroying children’s innocence. And last summer an on-line campaign by Mumsnet resulted in a cinema advert about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann stopped from being screened before the children’s film Shrek the Third”
THE TIMES: “Staff at Woolworths baffled by fuss over the little girl’s bed called Lolita”
“Woolworths has withdrawn bedroom furniture for young girls bearing the sexually charged name Lolita after a campaign waged by a mothers’ online chat room”
An internal company e-mail seen by The Times goes: “As discussed, we’ve got the product below on our website. Can it be hidden as soon as is possible? Then I really need to find out how it came about being on our site and who bought it. Lolita is a word that means sexually active young teenagers, so a young girls’ range of bedroom products is in very poor taste. We’ve had an approach from a website who are clearly a little disturbed by this”
THE SUN: “Gift from Maddie for twins”
No, not furniture
“Twins Sean and Amelie McCann will get a special present from their missing sister Maddie today on their third birthday. Parents Kate and Gerry got the gift for the pair who, at three, are the same age as Maddie when she vanished last May”
Sad. But is it relevant to the case? Is it news?
Grandmother Eileen McCann tells us: “Of course Madeleine being there would be our dream but we’ll do our best to make sure the twins have a lovely day”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Card from Madeleine at McCann twins party”
The twins are getting a gift in the Sun…
“Gerry and Kate McCann will throw a birthday party for their twins tomorrow - complete with a card from their missing four-year-old daughter, Madeleine”
DAILY STAR: “MISSING MADDIE’S SPECIAL PREZZIE”
“Little Sean and Amelie McCann will open a special present from their big sister as they celebrate their third birthday today”
With a card?
Says Eileen McCann: “There will be presents galore, lots of fun and games, lots of food and a big cake. Of course, Madeleine being home would make it complete and we continue to pray for that blessing”
SUR (Spain): “Marbella suffer their first loss of the year against Linares”
A football match: “Wearing T-shirts to raise awareness of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and Mari Luz Cortés, the children playing in the tournament accompanied the players onto the pitch as mascots at the beginning of the game”
RADAR: “Theater of Cruelty, Carnival of Souls”
“British rags hardly pretend to be providing straightforward news. What they are doing is what used to be the job of popular fiction; namely, processing myth out of characters sucked in from real life. Right now the cast list includes such durable regulars as Kate Moss—with or without Pete Doherty—Princes Harry and Wills, Posh and Becks, and Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine’s kidnapping/disappearance in Portugal made them last year’s headliners”
ALISTAIR CAMPBELL (TIMES): Britney Spears: person or news commodity? She’s a great singer but obviously ill: we in the media have to decide to leave her alone”
Britney Spears and Madeleine McCann..?
“In some sections of the media, Madeleine McCann and her family are there. As I said in the Cudlipp Lecture on Tuesday, her disappearance was an interesting and important story, the stuff of every parent’s nightmare. But it quickly became a commodity in which most of the media got close to hysteria, and some have remained there. Let us not pretend the coverage was driven by concern for the child - there are many missing children - or compassion for the parents - certainly not once the mood shifted - or regard for the truth. It has been the worst example of recent times, on a par with Diana, of some newspapers thinking that the word “Madeleine” sells, and finding literally any old nonsense to keep her name in that selling position on the front”
THE GUARDIAN: “Mechanics of the McCann campaign - Professional media management may have generated coverage of Maddy’s disappearance, but it hasn’t helped with public sympathy for the family”
“Try as they might neither Clarence Mitchell nor Justine McGuinness could quite shake off the sense that the way they’ve managed this case might have contributed to some negative public sentiment towards the family. In place initially as what Mitchell described as “a buffer” between the shocked and distraught parents and the world’s media, hungry for news about Madeleine, it’s clear that what developed was a professional media management operation. With city PR firm Bell Pottinger on hand - primarily, we can assume, to defend the interests of their clients Mark Warner Holidays - as well as Justine and, latterly, Clarence with all their experience of Westminster spin, the McCanns could not have wanted for more professional advice. But as time went on media management itself - and once you’ve started feeding stories to the press to get control of the agenda, you really can’t stop - began generating negative reaction from other parties”
Madeleine McCann: Making news and sensation from grief
Posted: 1st, February 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,022) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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February 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am
212 Lone
Do you doubt he’s a weirdo?
I mean, imagine he’s set us all up to be waiting for some non-existent news at 11.30.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am
204
Stevo Says:
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
199 Saturn
At first I took Ferdinand’s point at face value so looked into those timings more carefully. But there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Telegraph timings are anything but accurate. They have posting times all through the day.
To get a story posted at 12:01am it MUST have been prepared/vetted etc. well before then.
My guess is the story was sent probably six or seven hours before then. I think the ruse went pear shaped and this is a clue to it.
————————————
Nit picking here but there is no such time as 12:01 am.
If the story broke at 1 minute past midnight it was in fact 00:01 (no need for am/pm with 24 hr clock)
February 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am
192 You are unaware, that the final decision if the suspects are to stand trial, will be taken by the Home secretary.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:31 am
Sinking ship on Sky News.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:31 am
A bit of a weirdo if he is!
February 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am
Saturn
And yes, TB sent a letter but I’m not sure of its status.
Firestar
I looked for contact info at the Telegraph but there’s no email addresses or contacts listed. They have a form to send enquiries.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am
Lone Pigeon Says:
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
3 minutes sledgie boy
thank f*uck im getting bored and me tea has gone cold……..
February 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am
205 Lone Pigeon
Wonder if Sledgehammer’s sitting there laughing at us.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
Stevo - the Telegraph “feared abducted” headline in the 00.01 report is strange in view of the following.
“….Mr Woolfall says that he heard no suggestion in the early days that the girl had been snatched. “Certainly I did not hear any discussion that this could be a paedophile or an aggravated robbery. All the time I was around it was whether she could have wandered off and had an accident or somebody had actually taken her in, perhaps not with ill-intent.
“During the first 48 hours the word being used was ‘missing’ rather than ‘abducted’ or any link with a paedophile or any sort of crime. Towards the end of the second week I detected a shift towards there being a consciousness that she had probably been taken rather than wandered off, just on the assumption that anybody would have found her by now…..”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2599613.ece
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
simon
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
if you look at the image properties on the website pic does it show anything interesting when you download it?
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
3 minutes sledgie boy
February 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
199 Saturn
At first I took Ferdinand’s point at face value so looked into those timings more carefully. But there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Telegraph timings are anything but accurate. They have posting times all through the day.
To get a story posted at 12:01am it MUST have been prepared/vetted etc. well before then.
My guess is the story was sent probably six or seven hours before then. I think the ruse went pear shaped and this is a clue to it.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:27 am
198 coolandcalm
errrr… don’t think it quite came across in writing.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:27 am
correction of previous post: by “12:01 timing” I only mean the quickness from Kate’s announcement to the press release.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Hi Nosey.
What’s been happening then? Any announcement on the Aguido status?
February 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
189
firestar
I signed up to AP News’ media photo gallery. In there you can find many of the McCann photos in full hi-res glory. Including…the Madeleine Castle photo from the playground at Ocean Club. The photo is also attributed to the Foreign Office.
My guess is the geezer who downloaded the pics from Gerry’s camera (mentioned in various news stories) is also the “Foreign Office” person who sent the Telegraph that story too early…and the castle photo. Perhaps it’s the man who resigned just before the McCanns were made arguidos?
February 1st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Stevo, do you think this 12:01 timing was a mistake, or was there some reason that it was necessary to do this, even though not ideal?
And BTW was it you or TB who was going to file a ‘freedom of information’ request to find out who the ‘foreign office spokesman’ was in PDL , suspecting that it was Clarence Mitchell? Thanks.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Chloe…. 186
guess my ‘humour’ was too subtle!
February 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
stevo
like everything else in this case, it has to be, of all the times it could be, the mad time of 12.01 a.m, rather than any other time it could possibly have been.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
183
Stevo Says:
February 1st, 2008 at 11:14 am
142
Rockhopper
I think you misread my postings on the first news story.
I have no theory or proposed no theory on the subject. I said it was bizarre that the Foreign Office filed a story with the Daily Telegraph in less than an hour after the PJ were called.
If you are suggesting that the McCanns could have got consular help within this short time frame that’s not what I said or wondered about. I said I thought that the “ruse” was enacted too soon in my opinion. The handbrakes had barely been applied on the PJ’s squad cars and the Foreign Office is filing a story about an abducted child - this is clearly “too soon”.
————————————–
I wondered whether I was grabbing the right end of the stick.
Was the report to the telegraph an official FO press release or could it be that someone working in the consular or in the know passed the information to an old friend, if the source of the story someone that the recipiant knew was pretty reliable they would run with it.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
Ok what time is the news due, bored feckin stupid sat here………
February 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
192 Reporter
Personally, I would be interested in what the Portuguese had to say about the matter. After all, the case is theirs.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
190
or because we all feel guilty because she thought everyone was ignoring her on her bithday
February 1st, 2008 at 11:21 am
159 Portugal ?
——————–
Mods and Admin
The official police enquiry is in Portugal.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
i should ask the telegraph how they managed it.
should be a laugh.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
There are thousands of people having birthdays every day without getting the attention that Brandon Flours is receiving. I think she has friends in high places.
On the other hand, it might be that we all just like her!
February 1st, 2008 at 11:19 am
seems that way.
what does ‘posted by the foreign office’ mean?
i understood kate phoned her media friends early on, but even so it seems quick to get on the site.
not impossible though, if kate phoned the author.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:18 am
182 firestar
I agree. My point was that the story must have been sent to the Telegraph well before midnight. Look at all Telegraph stories and you’ll see they have various times attributed to them. Assuming a not unreasonable hour or so before the 12:01am for the story to actually get to the Telegraph, I think the people who concocted this whole story enacted certain parts of it too soon IMO.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:17 am
184 Firestar
But it wouldn’t have been later, would it? And I understand that to be the important aspect (or am I misunderstanding something?)