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Wednesday 29 January 2014

Why are we hearing so much about Madeline Mccan, what about other missing children?

Picture yourself as the parents of a young, vunerable child, who went missing over a decade ago, yet their news continues to be ignored and untold in the media today. Thousands of children, and even adults go missing every year,  It suggests a whole range of reasons the news (for example) would prioritize some cases and let others go unoticed. So why would people ignore such tragedies.  Its all to do with the publicity such as how dramatic the story is, or how rare, or the age of the child- It's all taken into account when deciding whether  or not the media would publish the case and help those effected by informing the rest of the country. Once the country would percieve the information, those who sympathised deeply and really wanted to help would take action and help look for the missing victim. But unfortuantely, The reality is if they ever did conclude to put every single lost person's story on the news, people would no longer watch the news, why? Because not everyone is intrested, and people especially don't want to hear the similar cases of missing people every day of their lives. You can argue on the oposite side of the spectrum that the vast quantities of lost victims would have a increasingly higher chance of being found almost straight after the disapearance were reported. People would recognise the missing faces, some would be traumatised themselves and so sympathetic towards the child and the family, alot of people will be inclined to look or help in some way effectively.

Imagain how isolated the parents must be feeling when their story gets ignored, in addition to trying to accept the fact they have supposedly lost a child.They watch the latest BBC news programme claiming a new investigation is taking place for Madeliene Mccan who went missing nearly 7 years back. As much as I feel sympathy for Kate and Jerry Mccan,  there have been thousands of other children missing during those 7 years since the media have continued to persist with the story about the 3 year old child. So, now we've estabalished you need to have an immensely rare story, intreging information, and preferably a young child (like the Mccans family) what chance is there you'll have your case published to the extent that they have? Its one in thousands. Why do we listen to them more, is it because they have more money, are middle class, well educated, pushy and are more articulate? What about people who don't have those advantages? The parents are putting pressure and being minipulative on the media to publisize their issue they have been going through; its unfair on those who don't have those advantages-such as poorer families, their cases are virtually ignored.

So my question to you is, is it fair for the parents of Madeline to minipulate the media to prioritize their child's disapearance, when there are other poorer families who are incapable of doing so? Leave your comments below.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Maria,
    It's an interesting topic, but I wonder how important media coverage is to securing a missing child's safe return?
    I, for instance, was no help at all to Maddy. 99.9% of the readers of her plight were just as helpless, I'm sure. So what actual good does the publicity achieve? I'm not sure it makes any difference to the victims.
    The police and other agencies investigate every case of a missing person, be they adult or child. Are we to infer that a big publicity campaign will somehow galvanise them into taking action they would not otherwise have done? I think that is being unfair to the people who work hard in those agencies.
    Publicise where there is some breakdown of the process,yes, but when everything is being done that can be done then I don't think extra, or even some, publicity is effective at all.
    Good blog :o)

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  2. My understanding is that the case was closed by the Portuguese police but then re-opened, with investigators being sent from the UK, following pressure from the family and all the media publicity. I wonder whether this is typical for children going missing in Europe. I suspect not.
    Anne

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