I was forced to watch The One Show tnight (my wife enjoys it) and there was an extended discussion on the media reaction to the disappearance of Shannon Matthews and contrasting that to the coverage of Madeleine McCann. Do we focus on one and not the other due to class politics?
A quick Google search and it seems this is a worldwide issue. I've thought about this before - if Madeleine McCann's parents had been chavs swigging beer in Benidorm rather than doctors sipping vino in Praia de Luz would the press coverage have been different? Do the papers give more sympathy to the white middle classes? Is it the papers or is it because the Great British public have more sympathy and more in common) with two nicely middle class parents from Rutland than they do for a single mother (seven kids from five men - why do I know that? I would doubt her sexual past has anything to do with it but it is in every paper. I have no idea how many men Kate McCann has slept with) from a rough estate? The papers, after all, only print what we want to read.
Hardeep Singh Kohli wondered why a white lawyer who was murdered got more media coverage than a Sikh gentleman who was murded in the same city on the same weekend? I don't know. I would imagine many Britons had more in common with the Sikh gentleman than they did with a City Lawyer. His suggestion that it was race-based is interesting though... as the public imagination in recent years has been caught by stories like the Damilola Taylor murder, the Stephen Lawrence murder and others.
A quick Google search and it seems this is a worldwide issue. I've thought about this before - if Madeleine McCann's parents had been chavs swigging beer in Benidorm rather than doctors sipping vino in Praia de Luz would the press coverage have been different? Do the papers give more sympathy to the white middle classes? Is it the papers or is it because the Great British public have more sympathy and more in common) with two nicely middle class parents from Rutland than they do for a single mother (seven kids from five men - why do I know that? I would doubt her sexual past has anything to do with it but it is in every paper. I have no idea how many men Kate McCann has slept with) from a rough estate? The papers, after all, only print what we want to read.
Hardeep Singh Kohli wondered why a white lawyer who was murdered got more media coverage than a Sikh gentleman who was murded in the same city on the same weekend? I don't know. I would imagine many Britons had more in common with the Sikh gentleman than they did with a City Lawyer. His suggestion that it was race-based is interesting though... as the public imagination in recent years has been caught by stories like the Damilola Taylor murder, the Stephen Lawrence murder and others.
Furthermore, I would imagine that the McCann's finances could pull in a media strategists and PR people to keep there campaign in the public eye. A very sad reality...
An extra step would be to say that after the McCann story, the Rhys Jones murder (again, I would imagine that the Jones family had more in common with the Matthews family than the McCanns but yet got a lot of press coverage and 'celebrity' backing), the story of a child going missing has lost some of it's immediacy, some of it's impact and no longer holds the front page in the way that it did last summer... perhaps because of the huge number of McCann stories.
Anyone with a heart or a brain wishes for these poor little girls to be returned to their families safe and sound as soon as possible. Whether one girl is focused upon more is probably more to do with the buying public and their bias than it is to do with any media bias.
An extra step would be to say that after the McCann story, the Rhys Jones murder (again, I would imagine that the Jones family had more in common with the Matthews family than the McCanns but yet got a lot of press coverage and 'celebrity' backing), the story of a child going missing has lost some of it's immediacy, some of it's impact and no longer holds the front page in the way that it did last summer... perhaps because of the huge number of McCann stories.
Anyone with a heart or a brain wishes for these poor little girls to be returned to their families safe and sound as soon as possible. Whether one girl is focused upon more is probably more to do with the buying public and their bias than it is to do with any media bias.
RS
PS - one of my favourite bloggers has responded to this.
1 comments:
Can't help but think everyone's missing the most obvious reason the two girls are treated differently...
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