Madeleine McCann: What Shannon Matthews Is Worth, Asda And PR
MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann and Shannon Matthews
THE SUN: “£20k reward in Shannon hunt”
THE Sun yesterday offered a £20,000 reward to find missing “little princess” Shannon Matthews.
Good on the paper. But does a reward help? Has it helped Madeleine Mccann? And why £20,000 when Madeleine McCann garnered so much more? Is a reward index linked to the missing child’s age? Or is it because Shannon’s parents are not middle-class - not doctors - and smaller amounts mean more to them?
We also printed posters urging our vast army of readers to help in the hunt for the nine-year-old schoolgirl. And last night her anguished mum Karen, 32, said: “I’m so grateful for all you are doing. It’s a fantastic gesture and means so much to us. We just hope it brings her back.”
Then, hugging Shannon’s stepdad Craig Meehan, 22, she added: “Our message to people is never give up . . . because we won’t until we find her.”
THE TIMES: “Poor little Shannon Matthews. Too poor for us to care that she is lost?”
“Her family may seem feckless. Neighbours can’t afford to run a PR campaign. How the public spotlight faded on missing girl.”
Shannon..?
Sarah Payne, smiling in her school uniform; Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in their Manchester United shirts; Madeleine McCann, staring inquisitively with her distinctive bleeding iris . . .The names and faces of these girls who have disappeared are etched into the public’s collective memory.
Camera crews camped out in their home towns for weeks or months. Donations totalled thousands — even millions — of pounds. Members of the public, many of them strangers, came in their hundreds to offer help and prayers for their safe return.
Yet the trauma and mystery surrounding the disappearance of one nine-year-old girl almost two weeks ago appeared to drift from public consciousness within days…
She’s not Madeleine McCann. No doctors. No logo. No Maddy Catty. No watching the parents. The media treatment is no fault of the McCanns. But are we bored of missing children stories. Have the press caught Maddy fatigue?
Contrast the media-savvy McCann campaign with the brave efforts of Petra Jamieson, 30, a friend of Shannon’s mother, who managed to persuade her local branch of Asda to donate 24 white T-shirts on which the girl’s photograph had been printed.
What happened to Shannon Matthews? Who can we blame? The parents?
A deprived background, a dysfunctional family and a down-on-its-luck Yorkshire mill town: none of this is Shannon Matthews’s fault, yet it seems that she is paying the price.
No holiday scene. No excuse for hacks to go to hotter climes. Yorkshire in winter. Grey. Grim.
GLASGOW DAILY RECORD: “Mother’s Day Wish”
THE distraught mum of missing schoolgirl Shannon Matthews last night cried: “All I want for Mother’s Day is my princess back.”
DAILY MIRROR: “ALL I WANT FOR MOTHER’S DAY IS MY PRINCESS BACK”
Shannon Matthews’ desperate mother last night movingly declared: “All I want for Mother’s Day is my princess back.”As police continued searching thousands of homes for the missing nine-year-old schoolgirl, mum Karen, 32, said: “It is a special family day and we would all spend it together.
“Shannon would usually buy me a present or make me something at school.”
Stepfather Craig Meehan, 22, added: “It is going to be a heartbreaking Mother’s Day.”
LIVERPOOL ECHO: “Where’s media cry for poor Shannon?”
HOW disturbing that 10 days after Shannon Matthews disappeared, we still know so little about her. Her favourite band? The school she attends? The name of her best friend? All details that should be on our lips but aren’t.
But we do know her favourite song.
Somehow the vanishing of this little girl with her pony tail and fringe has failed to capture the media’s imagination; a story regularly consigned to the inside pages.
Why? Why do some cases attract saturation coverage and others don’t? I suspect it’s down to image, which stands for everything, and the skill now needed to work the notoriously fickle media.
Madeleine McCann’s parents have been criticised for employing a professional PR and for playing the media game, providing photo opportunities and press calls. But it’s paid dividends. The world now knows their daughter’s name and what she looks like.
Shannon’s mum can be no less distraught than Kate, but whether she has the support or the finance to get a media campaign on the road is doubtful.
But at the end of the day there is a little girl out alone in a harsh, cold world. And we should all be working together to get her home.
What part does the media play in finding a missing child? Don’t we have the police to search for Shannon and crack the case?
THE OBSERVER (Blog): “Speaker gets new spin doctor”
A Whitehall spin doctor who was a spokeswoman for Madeleine McCann’s parents has been hired to help the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, deal with the media, it was announced today.
Not Campbell?
Sheree Dodd is an experienced communications expert who worked for John Prescott at the time it was revealed he was having an affair with his diary secretary.
Just another job…
Madeleine McCann- The PR Storm
Posted: 1st, March 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (798) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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March 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm
230 duncanR
Hello you. I am so angry at the posters comments. My blood is boiling. Got any dorritos today?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm
219
jo
How long will you be in Dublin for?
I could live there, I love the place.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m3/sep2007/0/0/21AD3D09-F1FD-3020-CC0F75B91CB45A53.jpg
Kate’n Gerry after being told they cannot use the money for the skiing trip they planned with poor unsuspecting Sean and Amalie now that the fund needs replenishment…
March 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/
Getting short of idea
March 1st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
212 i-dont-believe-them Says:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
‘the Child Support Agency of the UK would demand that each father give her 15% of his net pay if he fathered one child and 20% if he fathered two.‘
As many single mothers have found to their cost, the Child Support Agency is largely ineffectual in getting absent fathers to make financial provision for the fruit of their loins!
In any case, is a ‘missing’ child less deserving of our concern because of the lifestyle of her parents ?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
226 pppy
It is done here (Many things we do aren’t so good, but that one is). We are given very few details except the really necessary ones (age, area, clothing, where to call…). The advertisements are done by the police, in their words, and not by advertisers or press people trying to arouse our curiousity. They are given every 30 minutes on radios. They are posted on motorways. And it works. About a fortnight ago, they found a snatched baby that way.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I don’t believe them…..
Have you gone or are you writing a lengthy article on the woes of single mothers of various fathers?
I can’t wait to read it
NOT
March 1st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
203 Jo
You answered to my post while I was still plodding to write it!
Will you be able to post from Dublin? Or will you be too busy to even think of Anorak???
I hope you are well. Maybe you had too much stress.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
marie nicholas
another valid point, but how are we to know a child is missing? It should be put across the airwaves like traffic updates that interupt songs, and up on gantrys on motorways.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
222 Carmen
This poster wound me up and watched me go!
Well said!
I might just add, that if an absent parent has subjected the mother to violent abuse, the csa will NOT take money from him, its called just cause, so if her ex was a bit of a male bully it may be that she gets no pennies from him anyway.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
203 jo:
“… their mediatic circus”
Lovely neologism. Does it make CM a mediatrician
March 1st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
219…jo
Good….best of luck with health matters and with Dublin too.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
218 lilith
Well said
IMO, normally people that moan about csa are men that have buggered off after having affairs, and don’t want to pay for their responsibilities
GRRRR
March 1st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Again, about publicity given by newspapers in the case of a missing child :
I don’t think the sort of publicity newspapers give is efficient. From what I read, the publicity has to be very targetted, especially on people who rent cars, taxi drivers, railways and airports attendants, shopkeepers, etc… Otherwise, you’ll get plenty of false leads which the press will thrive on, but which will divert the people in charge from their work.
Maybe the MCs didn’t trust the Portuguese police from the start, but given the British police were involved very early, as well as the consular authorities, their advertising campaign didn’t seem appropriate in case of an abduction. It belonged to the advertisement business, as far as I can judge. Certainly appropriate if the aim was to make the case well known, but the aim was to get the child back.
It isn’t the media, newspapers, PR, etc… job to find missing children. Supposing the MCs were so upset that they could make that type of mistake, I don’t understand why the authorities didn’t give them better advise.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
215
Matt.
Getting there slowly.
Next week more stuff coming up test and all then if all clear I am off to Ol Dublin!!!!
Thanks for asking Matt.
Here a saturday prizzi
http://bp0.blogger.com/_3HAnFzHSqqE/R3WIYcAcp0I/AAAAAAAAAfg/xJIfaSmVM8Y/s1600-h/calendar_kate_mccann.jpg
March 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
212
The state has to do something to protects children’s needs even if things seem unfair sometimes.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
212 i don’t believe them
what happens when there is a happy couple, and the male dies, leaving the mother and two children, or a couple seperate and the wife/husband is left jobless holding the children?
The smartass comments you make about the state - I hope were mainly directed at the fact the she has 7 children by 5 fathers?
How dare you stereotype? Take off your blinkers, there are genuine people claiming benefits, and maybe some that are unscrupulous, but wide generalisations like the one you made are very very dangerous things to make.
You SNOB.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
211
Ciara
Hola Guapa! /hi pretty one
March 1st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
214..jo
Feeling better, jo ?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
208
lilith
…alternatively rubbed in their own crap
It will come.Dont worry
Also whatever the outcome some people will never give up to find the truth for Madeleine.
They will not have a moment of peace never ever.They”ve made of the world their very own jail.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
veritablequandary
The grandparents hardly saw them…they could have made up a story about the coloboma suddenly developing just before they took their”holiday”.
Their budget cut down price holiday…they were strapped for cash and now they ‘ve got a million in the bank.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
why does a British woman have seven kids with five different men?
my guess is because the Child Support Agency of the UK would demand that each father give her 15% of his net pay if he fathered one child and 20% if he fathered two.
Doing the Maths, or the math as they say, if the average net earnings of the fathers is £15,000 ($30,000) a year, Shannon’s mother could pocket £12,750 ($25,500) a year from child maintainance.
If you add in the automatic “Child Benefit” (about £17 a week ($35) per child) of £6,200 a year.
and the Children’s Tax Credit (£375? per child a year?) of £2600,
then factor in that health care - what it is - is free in the UK
and they live on a cheap diet of diet coke, frozen chips, and turkey twizzlers,
and she is living in a council house - an actual house actually owned by the State - and probably paying no more than £300 ($600) a month (if that) in rent,
you can see how well she is doing.
She earns about £21,575 or $43,150 a year for being, well, you come up with the term to describe her.
I would appreciate being corrected regarding the numbers above.
The chief difference , as I see it, between Madeleine and Shannon’s situations is that in Madeliene’s situation the parents are evil and in Shannon’s situation the State is evil.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Afternoon Jo.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
190
Gandolf
March 1st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Any news about that wonder dog Eddie today ?
March 1st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
203
jo
I wanna see their smug faces on a stick….
March 1st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
206…Gandolf
I’ll let agw be the judge of that.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Matt, thanks for confirming that I have an opinion, now what about your bandwidth prob.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
194 marie nicholas
I agree, money won’t help find a child but publicity will, and these days its a sad fact that they come hand in hand.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm
190
Gandolf
.