Read All About It

As I've mentioned before, Ireland's news coverage is primarily just siphoned from the British media. And if you didn't know, the British media has a reputation for being ridiculously sensational, a reputation that is well-deserved. It differs from American media sensationalism, however, first in that there are less flashy graphics and theme music flourishes for each story, and second in that the media's coverage and comment is explicit in what the viewer should feel—it is readily apparent how you are expected to react. While I'm not calling American news more objective—it's not—the news in the States lends more of an air of impartiality by the way it is presented (always harping about "balance", which, for example, will lead to covering 12 pro-war protesters at a 100,000-strong anti-war rally). Surprisingly to me, presenting a story as a series of facts and withholding judgment for the viewer turns out to be a strictly American fetish*. So the Irish media borrows more from the British than from the US, owing to greater proximity and to the simple fact that most tabloids here are just British ones with an "Irish" prefix tacked onto the name (the Sun, the Star, the Mirror, the Irish Daily Mail). To its credit, however, Ireland has been named number one in the world in terms of freedom of the press.

It is not, however, without its sensationalist streak. Right now, gripping the country for the fifth straight month is the case of a missing four-year-old British girl named Madeleine McCann. "Maddie"'s parents brought her and her infant twin brothers to a resort in Portugal last May, then left their children completely alone in their unlocked hotel room one night while they had dinner. When they returned, Madeleine was gone, and the McCanns have traversed the whole of Europe raising publicity, hoping for someone to recognize her and return her to her totally undeserving parents. The hook is that both daughter and parents are handsome and snowy white, the latter being rich doctors to boot. At first, a media firestorm the likes of which haven't been seen since Diana's death gripped the UK: a photograph of the child hung in every shop window there (and even a good many here), the story received attention every night on Sky News at first, then eventually every night and day, each detail breathlessly advanced to a hungry public. This process was somewhat slowed by the Portuguese police, who by law declined to release any information pertaining to an open case (this earned the particular ire of the tabloids, who thus portrayed the police as incompetent). Apparently members of British Parliament were even wearing yellow armbands in solidarity.

Eventually the inevitable sunk in, and the world came to its senses and began to move on, much to the consternation of the McCanns, who continued to demand media attention and heaps of sympathy for their misfortune prompted solely by their fatally negligent parenting. The public, however, was weary of a missing child case going nowhere, and by the end of the summer it looked like the child would never be found and the McCanns would earn their place in infamy and eventually (if not so quietly) recede into obscurity.

A backlash began as people finally started wondering: who leaves their children alone and unprotected in a strange place while they go have drinks with friends? Others found it odd that the McCanns would go through such superhuman effort and such extravagant expense to draw attention to their self-induced plight, when it all could have been prevented with a turn of a deadbolt. Still others pointed out that all the while this was happening, other children, not as pretty, not as rich, not as white, go missing every day. Where was their media frenzy?

But such pertinent questions were suddenly put on hold a week or so ago when the sensational side of this case struck back with a vengeance. Portuguese police announced that mother Kate McCann was now a suspect in her daughter's disappearance. It came out that the McCann's car in Portugal had blood matching Madeleine's in the trunk, blood that indicated its owner had taken a large dose of sleeping medication. While the McCanns were permitted to finally return home to England by the police, they may be called back at any time. As it stands now, every little detail is once again front-page news, and talk of "Maddie" is still on everyone's lips. This time, however, there is no sympathy for the two parents, and the two have "fought back" to the press, professing their unbesmirched innocence.

If anything is fascinating about this whole affair (and very little is), it's the dynamic relationship between the media coverage of the case and its audience. At the beginning, to even suggest that the McCanns were unwise to abandon their children to the wolves while they wined and dined was to invite a vile sort of contempt, and revealed the unbeliever as lacking any soul to speak of. Now, the same tabloids that elevated the McCanns to such great heights hurl some pretty strong invective at them—not because anyone feels "fooled", oddly, and not because everyone has suddenly realized that the parents doomed their own daughter, but simply because they are suspects. It's eerie how easily led the general public is on this case, shifting it as it goes on from irrelevant to to irritating to unsettling.

And of course, eventually came the coverage of the coverage, of the media phenomenon that is the Madeleine McCann story; apparently outlets like Sky News and the Daily Mail feel no shame in recursively reporting on themselves, instead acutely aware that anything mentioning Madeleine at all is guaranteed to sell. It all goes to prove that the British media has perfected the transformation of human misery to light entertainment. This is the real primetime; they were just cutting their teeth with Lady Di. Utterly forgotten is that a child has been lost, that children continue to be lost; instead Madeleine and her parents have been propelled to a sick celebrity status to sate a very credulous public. They have become these vague symbols of a "glad-it-wasn't-us" mentality, a dark spot that refuses to wash away, no matter how much feigned sympathy is poured on. The public at large doesn't follow the Madeleine case because they feel sorry for the missing girl; they follow it to get a cheap thrill, in the hopes that a symbolic evil figure will be punished for a symbolic wrongdoing. Then, whatever the outcome, they can move on, their vicarious bloodthirst satisfied; the McCanns can tack on "famous" (or "infamous") to their list of self-description, aware that they will always be able to bask in some of the limelight which they so clearly enjoy; and the tabloids can run off with that much more money, encouraged to do the same all over again with whatever story happens to bite, whatever torment gives people such pleasure in watching while completely removed from its consequences.

* Though, copying-and-pasting from White House press releases and giving a voice to people completely removed from reality is another.