I feel sorry for the McCann family and anger for whoever has inflicted this on them but have no patience with the media induced frenzy or the sick opportunism of celebrities who have jumped onto this bandwagon to gain some PR points.
The trouble is that around this Portuguese resort there are scores of UK hacks milling about with nothing to do. Now the average intelligence level of journalists is more or less on a par with an earwig so they have to post whatever comes into their “mind” to keep the editors happy and justify their expenses. Hence the speculation about Robert Murat (looks suspicious so must be guilty) and, even better, a Russian IT expert. Add the usual ingredient of local police (foreign so must be incompetent), photogenic middle class family, a slow news week or two and you have the recipe for a perfect media frenzy.
Above them all you have the satisfying spectre of the pedophile stranger – such an attractive demon which conveniently helps us to ignore the fact that the vast majority of incidents of child abuse are perpetrated by family or friends of family.
Simon Jenkins has been a lone voice of reason here http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2082505,00.html but in general the media have been at their worst – they don’t do fairness or reason very well at all but they love to do “I feel your pain”……