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 3:44 pm
Julie, I don’t remember a guitar in Emmanuel one, other instruments but not a guitar.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
289 duncanR
Forget the crips. You got any valium? You know its what all we single mothers live on, oh that and free handouts from the government.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
286 - i feel for Madeleine and for Shannon. I think the McCanns are evil and i dont trust Karen. does that make me cold?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
#
288
i-dont-believe-them Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
269 duncan - if shannon’s mother was involved, that would be evil. if the step dad was involved, that probably wouldn’t be. but i would have to think about this more
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You’re seriously p*ssing me off now - did you buy your fugging IQ in a grocery store?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
288
i-dont-believe-them Says
Seems to me you need to think about a LOT of things more.
Like operating your brain before you start typing anymore crap.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
285 i-dont-believe-them Says:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I doubt many people would share your definition of ‘evil’!
March 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
269 duncan - if shannon’s mother was involved, that would be evil. if the step dad was involved, that probably wouldn’t be. but i would have to think about this more
March 1st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Ade … the Tommy Emmanuel one
March 1st, 2008 at 3:40 pm
i-dont-believe-them, I have this vision of something more than butter melting in your gob.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
278 - well, i save evil for people who would cause an innocent man to be accused of a crime so they would get off or implicate entire races of people so they could get off, or lie to a nation so men everywhere would be tarred as being dangerous. mere murder isn’t very evil.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
282 matt
I can only imagine. Its disgusting.
i feel sick when my sons get a little graze
March 1st, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Any single fathers on here, please do not take offence at my post regarding fathers for justice. It seemed that the poster I directed that comment at seemed embittered and twisted towards single mothers and my response was solely directed in response to his post to me.
Honest.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:37 pm
279…pppy
Manty a parent, or parents, have done much much worse.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:37 pm
268 Julie
ade .. while you’re here … what type of geetar is that dude playing on the earlier video?
which video?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
pppy - you shouldnt bathe your children every night - the combination of hot water, soap, and hard water, where applicable, can cause skin ailments and reduce immunity.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
271 matt
yes, I didn’t think of that. Thats gross. no-one could do that to their own child. Surely?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
269 i-dont-believe-them Says:
…… it wouldn’t surprise me if a family member was involved in her disappearance.
But that doesn’t make them evil.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If a family member was involved in her disappearance they would not, in your opinion, be evil ??????
March 1st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
269
i-dont-believe-them Says:
March 1st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
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It’s not ONLY kids from poor backgrounds or who have COMMON or TYPICAL (as you so snobbishly put it) parents that go missing!
March 1st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
272
A single dad.
Oh I get it now
A member of Fathers for Justice no doubt.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
the reason that Madeliene McCann is so much more interesting than Shannon Matthews is because we in the UK expect lower class mothers, like Karen, to be bad parents.
it comes as a surprise when someone with a uni ed and qualifications turns out to be such a shit parent.
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Mods and Admin
Even so, both mothers are found to be wanting and inadequate in their different ways, one apparently comfortably off and one living off the state, but in all honesty that is NOT why their daughters have disappeared. Is it the reason though one got a lot of media interest and the other didn’t, but it may also be that one child is more photogenic than the other.
When I first saw the good lady doctor I was shocked that she was a doctor, she was horribly chav like in dress, and in accent.
But one mother had a husband and the father of all her children with her, and still…..
But shall we wait and see what has happened to both the girls, before we get too judgemental on the mothers link to the disappearance of both? It may be very relevant, but it just might not be
March 1st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
ppy, fancy a roll, I can guarantee you 200% live mortars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxUpTYyHlcw
March 1st, 2008 at 3:33 pm
269 I really don’t believe you.
DO YOU KNOW ME? DO YOU KNOW HOW I RAISE MY CHILDREN? DO YOU KNOW HOW I COOK THEM MEALS FROM SCRATCH AND BATH THEM EVERY NIGHT? DO YOU KNOW HOW I FOUGHT TO KEEP THEM, INSTEAD OF LIVING WITH THEIR FATHER WHO WAS VIOLENT? DO YOU THINK I AM COMMON? DO YOU KNOW HOW I SING THEM TO SLEEP AND HEM THEIR SCHOOL TROUSERS? AND HOW I MAKE THEM MAKE CARDS FOR THEIR FATHERS GIRLFRIEND ON MOTHERS DAY?
AND I AM COMMON AM I? HOW DARE YOU COME ON HERE AND START CALLING ME COMMON WHEN YOU HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT ME.
YOU STUPID BLINKERED little person.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:32 pm
pppy - i am a uk single dad. where do you think i am? i’m in south london
March 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
265…pppy
Possibly to slow down the rate of putrefication. ?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
269 I don’t believe you.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
255 pppy -
Karen Matthews is TYPICAL and COMMON, in both senses of the word. There are millions of women living off the State or under the power of the state. I don’t blame them (or you, probably!) but you can see how that lifestyle is DANGEROUS and UNHEALTHY to children. Your lifestyle is dangerous to your children (and society, too)
but I don’t know what happened to Karen’s daughter. I find it sad and scarey (sic) how she talks about her daughter such as saying Shannon had ‘tickle fights’ with her 22 year old ‘dad’ But that doesn’t make them evil.
Administrator: This posting has been edited for legal reasons. Do not attempt to repost the section I have removed. Once in error is OK. Twice and the consquences will be dire.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
ade .. while you’re here … what type of geetar is that dude playing on the earlier video?
March 1st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
264 Ade
Gerry does have a pinchy face, you are bang on. Its like he has constipation!
March 1st, 2008 at 3:27 pm
You go for it pppy, staying positive is the ONLY way to go! And that doesn’t mean shutting up for something you don’t agree with.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Back to the topic before I get put in Mds….
Why would they embalm madeleine?
Gross.