Madeleine McCann: ‘Creepy’ Robert Murat Sues Media, FBI Investigates And Hating Kate McCann
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
THE SUN: “McCanns want an FBI probe”
The FBI is America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. Madeleine McCann is British child who went missing in Portugal.
Says the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell: “We believe Portuguese police have been found wanting. We are asking the British Government to call for such an inquiry. It’s important for Madeleine and other missing children.”
But what of the FBI?
Kate and Gerry want a panel of missing children experts, including former US and Met police, to look at how the inquiry team handled itself.
So not an FBI probe, rather an investigation by a group of which some may be American. Read all about it!
THE GUARDIAN: “McCann case suspect issues record number of libel writs.”
One of the formal suspects in the Madeleine McCann case is to sue 12 media outlets in what may be one of the largest libel claims in the history of the British media.
It’s “creepy” “oddball” Robert Murat:
Robert Murat is demanding damages from 11 newspapers and one TV station. It is the largest number of claims ever made against different British media outlets on the same issue.
Simons Muirhead and Burton, a London-based law firm, confirmed it was “representing Robert Murat in respect of a number of libel actions”.
The case is being brought against Sky, the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Metro, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, News of the World, Sun and the Scotsman.
The Mirror’s Lori Campbell told the police of the “creepy” Murat. But why did she tell the press?
Watching Robert Murat
THE HERALD: “Madeleine suspect Murat could win £2m suing UK media”
Caroline Kean, of media law specialists Wiggin, said that if Mr Murat successfully argued the papers inferred he was involved in Madeleine’s abduction or murder, he could win a record payout.
She said: “You could expect £200,000 per paper, per claim, and that would clear £2m.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann ’suspect’ Robert Murat sues British media for libel”
He and his family are believed to be particularly aggrieved by a number of reports in the aftermath of his being made an arguido - or official suspect - which repeated claims made by Portuguese media.
In at least one case - the false allegation that there were pornographic images on his computer - the Portuguese media later published corrections.
THE TIMES: “Brits love to torture a ‘bad mother’”
Says Melanie Reid: “In a long media career, the persecution of Kate McCann is the cruellest thing I have seen.”
Crueller than the media’s take on Robert Murat?
How many centuries of accumulated spite and misogyny, I wonder, went into the latest twist in the Madeleine McCann saga.
Did the British television presenters feel the remotest twinge of conscience as they sensationally reported - second-hand via a Spanish television station - the leaks from the Portuguese police portraying Kate McCann in the worst possible light, as a mother who had left her children to cry?
And did Britain’s tabloid editors, themselves presumably sons of mothers and husbands to the mothers of their own children, flinch even a jot as they ordered the devastating headlines “Mummy, why didn’t you come when we cried?” to be unfurled on their front pages alongside the face of the missing little girl?
I have seen, lived with and been party to many different kinds of sadism in a long media career, but I honestly think that this latest outbreak of malice towards Kate McCann is just about the cruellest thing I have witnessed…
But somehow we have passed a watershed. With this latest betrayal, picking deep at Kate McCann’s emotional scars, we have regressed to the level of the medieval peasants reaching for the ducking stool. Although women suspected of being witches, I sometimes grimly think, received a fairer fate in their slow drowning than do modern women accused of being bad mothers, who are tortured to the point of mental disintegration.
And then the clincher:
Why do we do perpetuate this immense cruelty upon women? There is no justice in it. Kate McCann is just the latest in a long line of high-profile victims of the prevailing fatwa - that all mothers must be perfect, self-sacrificing angels. From Kate McCann to Louise Campbell (the mother of Molly/ Misbah, the Scots girl who fled to be with her father in Pakistan), to Britney Spears to Anne Robinson to Frances Shand Kydd, nobody loves to torture a perceived bad mother or a bolter like the British do.
Yeah, Britney Spears, Princess Diana’s mother and a BBC quiz show host are like Kate McCann, a woman whose child went missing and is an “arguido” in the case. Good of Ms Reid to point that out.
Posted: 14th, April 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (1,055) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
April 15th, 2008 at 8:48 am
1054 Thanks Carmen for the update on Struan’s opinion about MCc Gross Neglect.
I see Melanie Reid has slandered/slurred/smeared the PJ too. Are any respectable journalists/ politicians defending the PJ from the hail of slurs from British newspapers/ journalists? Matt Parris defended Murat’s media’s destruction, but I cannot find any defence of the PJ (presumably there is a defence case to be made, if so it is time to make it).
April 15th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Agenda Wide
As far as I can tell, Struan’s e-mail is receiving the same treatment as the PJ’s rebuttal.
Doesn’t have the Clarrie seal of approval……..
Such a sad state of affairs. As a long time expatriate, I remember the respect the BBC used to command as being the one truly trustworthy source of information. Balanced and Informed.
In these parts it now has the same respect as Pravda.
Hence my long term interest in Anorak.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Peter Mac
That is good news!! Hopefully there will a few more later
April 15th, 2008 at 7:40 am
12 arrests this morning in connection with the Rhys Jones murder. Sky news on now.
Some for Murder, others for Pervert the Course, others for Firearms.
Sounds like the full team.
The plod love to bide their time until they have everything they need for a conviction. Not merely for a prosecution.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:21 am
1050
DuncanR
Cheeky!! I am working
I am getting it done now, so I can be on here later when there are collars being felt
April 15th, 2008 at 7:18 am
1047 - brandon flours
‘I have been awake since 4.’
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Lazy stop-in-bed !!!
April 15th, 2008 at 7:12 am
1046 Carmen
There appeared to be nothing on BBC1 but perhaps BBC24 ? At least the papers are covering it mentioning ’significant developments’.
BTW hope you got Struang-along (By McTeam) Stevenson’s email. Any update on how it has been received in media?
April 15th, 2008 at 7:10 am
+ with sky news on I mean
April 15th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Carmen
I have not seen any, except for a 30 sec brief mentioning once on Sky, accompanied by them smiling coming up the escaltors last week. I have been awake since 4.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Morning Brandon!
Clarence should have a care - he might be sorry if the PJ grant his wish and explain how the leak became public.
Interesting how the media gave him so much air time to denounce the leak - has anyone seen any air time devoted to the PJ’s rebuttal? I haven’t.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:00 am
‘Mitchell last night refused to retract his comments and added: “The Portuguese police have yet to explain how these statements came to be leaked.” ‘
Who the fucking hell does this arsewipe think he is
April 15th, 2008 at 6:56 am
A very good day to you Agenda
April 15th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Morning Brandon, Can’t stop for long. I’ve already sniffed the air
Stevo, Can you add Melanie Reid to the Rogue’s Gallery - she admits to being uninformed but is repressive,reducing legitimate questions (not all about Kate) to a witchhunt.
OFF OFF OFF (not with her head surely)
Eh let her off with a yank of the Shepherd’s Crook this time but 3 strikes creating the audience-puke response and she’s off to the media wonderland for ’serious writers’ who have lost the plot.
———————————————————————–
Brits love to torture a ‘bad mother’Melanie Reid
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/melanie_reid/article3739770.ece
‘Many serious writers have deliberately avoided discussing the case of Madeleine. Not because it is not serious, but because there was no enlightenment we could bring; nothing remotely we could add to the frenzy of distress, loss and bewilderment.
I have avoided reading or watching most of the coverage. It was too harrowing; the couple’s grief too visceral to bear; and I could not stand the treatment they received from the macho, out-of-their-depth Portuguese police. For many of us, it was enough, briefly, to contemplate the horror of losing our own child. Anything more was prurience and soap opera.
And so it is time to speak out in defence of Kate McCann, a woman whom I have never met, but someone who is being sacrificed to society’s tyrannical views about a mother’s role.’
April 15th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Nosey
John
Matt
Anne-Marie and Michael Wright
Anne-Marie Wright, who is the cousin of Kate McCann, and her husband Michael live in Skipton, Yorkshire. They married in 1991 and now have two children, Katie and Peter. The Wright family first heard of Madeleine’s disappearance in the early hours of Friday May 4, when Mrs Wright’s mum, Sheila Cowell, called with the news. Mrs Wright’s husband, Michael, then drove another relative to join Madeleine’s grandparents in Liverpool and then went out to Portugal to help with the search. And Mrs Wright has since been out to the Algarve twice and on the last occasion she and her husband looked after Madeleine’s brother and sister, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, while Kate and Gerry, Madeleine’s dad, journeyed to Morocco. Michael Wright was the co-signatory on the hire car. He drove the car to Huelva in Spain. Kate and Gerry McCann are godparents to the Wright’s two children, The baptism of Kate’s godson, Patrick, and Gerry’s goddaughter, Katie, was at St Stephen’s Church, Skipton, North Yorkshire. Kate came back with her twins Sean and Amelie to attend the baptism (14th/15th July) and met up with husband Gerry who had been in London since 12th July for meetings police and child protection professionals. Michael Wright attended Ballakermeen High School in the Isle of Man from 1976 before moving to Bridlington in 1978. In 1981 he joined St John Fisher RC High School in Harrogate. He had a short career in the military before moving into Information technology. In 2000 he joined Alaric Systems but is now descibed as “owning a software company in Leeds”.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:23 am
To disrupt the enquiry
The PJ says they “deplore the intervention of the spokesman, particularly at a time when significant steps were made in the research.” The president of ASFIC goes further. “Finally it is known where the truth is. While the PJ fulfilled their duty to investigate what happened to the child, the spokesman of the parents was manipulating the public opinion,” he accuses.
For Carlos Anjos, “who mounted the scheme was Mr Clarence Mitchell. He needed to find an excuse to avoid the participation of the couple in the reconstruction, saying now that he does not trust the PJ.” The ASFIC is available to give legal support to the researchers who feel targeted by the statements of Mitchell and want to move forward with a criminal complaint.
http://jn.sapo.pt/2008/04/15/policia_e_tribunais/portavoz_mc_cann_e_mentiroso.html
April 15th, 2008 at 5:45 am
NOSEY
thanks for your post re Mrs B’s ranting, will read tonight. Are you on nights ?
Will read later.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Hey…
Where’s Stevo
April 15th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Maybe WHAT was leaked . . .
Hard to imagine IT was . . .
words escaping
April 15th, 2008 at 2:26 am
1036
Odd to be sure. Maybe was was leaked is very similar to official statements.
Hard to imagine is was a total invention.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:22 am
In their official declaration yesterday, The PJ says that the text that TVcinco was refering to and publishing,
is not the text the PJ have in the process.
Somebody made it up, that is what I believe.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:51 am
1034
False Flag
Nope, sorry - coolandcalm is a typical middle class wannabe and I have no time for her.
She doesnt think about the child, she cares only about the McCanns because she identifies with them. Even here she has no courage and no true convictions, advertising herself and her literary (loose term) works.
She should consider the child not the parents.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:33 am
845 Marie Nicholas:
Well said Marie………Ian, I would strongly second these thoughts……….I hope you can receive them as the gift that they are. You are one who is able to weigh and consider and take hold of what is helpful, as you have shown previously.
Till tomorrow…………..
April 15th, 2008 at 12:59 am
837 Christine:
“Has anyone considered that they test the waters to see who is listening and observing or, can the media get away with it.”
I’m willing to bet that some very detailed analysis has been going on with regard to the on-line dynamics of the various McCann Blogs. After all that is what clarrie’s old project was all about. Incidentally, I was under the impression that he was not employed by Kennedy prior to his present position. Cool and Calm suggested that he would ‘go back to that job’. Surely he came straight from his government media watching ?
Take care C & C …………
BTW, Northerners……I live in Morth Yorkshire !!
April 15th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Jo, too funny——be good.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:51 am
1029
Sally
Nite nite
Dont have nightmares with your accounts and all….not worth it!
I am off as well
xx
April 15th, 2008 at 12:50 am
1026
Sally
I know…pfff,let me call some people around to see if they can help,I mean R.Branson,Godyy,the Pope,may be even the mccanns???
April 15th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Jo,
I have to go now and finish my taxes, deadline is tomorrow. I’m leaving it up to you to sue everyone you possibly can, sounds like we’re gonna need lots of mullah.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:48 am
1021
Saul
Funny this…where are they all our favorite pros? gone to PLD for the reconstruction???
April 15th, 2008 at 12:47 am
1022
can’t say no
May be heads will roll this week?
Nite nite
I am going as well in a minute or….2
xx
April 15th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Jo,
I’m sure everyone would love to come, maybe we’ll have to buy a fleet of jets.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:45 am
1023
can’t say no Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 12:43 am
1021
Saul
They’ll go more abusive ,IMHO
============
Is that possible