When the Hounders tried to wreck a debate at the Oxford Union....

**bb1** Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:33 pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2008/jan/31/themccannsdebatefrombanali

The McCanns' debate: from banality to an outpouring of bile

I feared that last night's debate on "The McCanns and the media" (see posting immediately below) would generate more heat than light. In fact, it generated neither heat nor light. Aside from some persistent interruptions from a group of misguided, self-appointed busy-bodies, the standing-room-only event at the LSE was marked by its banality.

That doesn't mean that we didn't hear interesting views, but - as a debate - it never took off. It didn't help that two-thirds of the panel were required to sit "off stage", thereby limiting the ease of participation. On the other hand, we did get a glimpse of the irrational prejudice blighting the whole affair.

It began well enough when Kelvin MacKenzie opened with a reasonably measured and thoughtful contribution that rightly pointed to several remarkable features of the McCanns saga that had helped to make it into what he hyperbolically called "the greatest story of my lifetime." But he mostly made a lot of good sense. Social class had played a part in the media's immediate interest and in helping to catch the public's imagination. He revealed that he had shown an understanding for the plight of Gerry and Kate McCann but readers of his Sun column had not.

He spoke of "10,000 emails" that were overwhelmingly hostile to the McCanns for having left their children in their bedroom unsupervised. His readers did not share his sympathy for the couple and, by implication, that had changed his mind somewhat.

I was altogether less enamoured with his defence of papers, especially the Express titles, for publishing wildly inaccurate stories. Kelvin's defence? Newspapers are commercial operations and you must expect them to publish stories calculated to increase sales. The temptation to ramp up circulation was too great to resist. That doesn't wash with me at all.

Next up was Clarence Mitchell, the official spokesman for the McCanns. He launched a broadside on a press guilty of carrying speculative stories without any basis in truth. Stories, incidentally, which he had often formally denied before publication.

He explained how British journalists relied for most of their stories on the Portuguese papers that also ran speculative and unverifiable material. After being spun in British tabloids, the Portuguese then picked them up the following day, pretending that the fact they had appeared in the British press was "proof" of their veracity. In other words, it was a constant recycling of gossip and innuendo, none of it based on fact.

Mitchell's concern about trying to deal with a rampant global media was echoed in the experiences of his predecessor in the role, Justine McGuinness. She spoke of the immense scale of media interest, implying that it was virtually impossible to cope with a hydra-headed media beast demanding daily, almost hourly, feeds.

Roger Graef, producer of Channel 4's Dispatches on the mystery of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, spoke of the surreal, Kafkaesque nature of making a documentary in which there were (and are) no facts and about which no-one has any genuine knowledge, including the Portuguese police.

David Mills is the man who produced a documentary for Panorama and then disowned it because key material - some of it critical of the Portuguese police - was omitted. He was concerned about the media's failure to hold the police to account and complained about the dearth of proper investigative journalism about the case.

So far, so good. But once the debate was opened out to the audience by chairman Steve Hewlett, it went nowhere helpful. A vociferous group who have formed an organisation called The Madeleine Foundation showed a lamentable grasp of debating rules by interrupting speakers and shouting out a string of offensive comments about the McCanns and their PRs.

Their anger may have been sincere, but it became abundantly clear that they are infected with prejudice. Many of the claims they made - about money donated to the McCanns' fund, about payments to PRs, about the McCanns' actions and relationship with the police - were obviously based on the inaccurate accusations and innuendos published by so many newspapers.

However, reflecting on the debate on my journey home, I realised that they represented the authentic voice of so many British people, the Sun readers Kelvin had mentioned and probably the readers of all popular papers. It is not pretty.

Their unconcealed bile, their lack of compassion for the McCanns, their sanctimonious statements about the supposed parenting inadequacies of the McCanns, do not stem wholly from poor reporting.

Certainly, false stories have contributed to their fallacious arguments. But they were uninterested in the rational statements of Mitchell and McGuinness. They took no notice of the subtle arguments of Graef and Mills.

They were the equivalent of those mobs outside courts in murder trials, deaf to facts, cocooned from reality by their own self-righteous demagoguery. Their major aim, outlined in a "manifesto" circulated within the lecture theatre, is to see the McCanns prosecuted for "abandoning" their children.

The newspapers that have retailed nonsense about this case do have a lot to answer for. But then so do the people, do they not? What the debate never touched on was whether the media could, even eight months' on, play a positive role to counter the misinformation that appears now to have taken such a grip among the population.

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Anyone fancy a bet they'll do the same in the High Court next week?

**Sabot** Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:46 pm

I do hope so.

When the Hounders tried to wreck a debate at the Oxford Union....

When the Hounders tried to wreck a debate at the Oxford Union....

Re: When the Hounders tried to wreck a debate at the Oxford Union....