European Tabloids Still Agog Months After Child Vanishes

LONDON, Nov. 8 — Gerry McCann Back at Work, the tabloid Evening Standard screamed out to London commuters on a recent afternoon.

A British tabloid piece focused on Kate and Gerry McCann.

Six months after Madeleine McCann, then 3 years old, disappeared from her familys vacation apartment in Portugal, no development in the case seems too small to merit a banner headline — even the news that her father had returned to his job as a doctor.

Similarly, no story is too speculative. I Saw Maddy Taken Away in Taxi, a rival tabloid, The Mirror, reported a few days ago. And no sensational leak can be reported often enough. Maddy DNA Bombshell: New Results Put Parents Back in the Spotlight, The Standard said, atop an article that reported renewed assertions that Madeleines parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, might have been involved in her disappearance.

There have been few concrete developments in the case. Madeleine McCann disappeared from the apartment in the village of Praia da Luz, on the Algarve coast of Portugal, on the night of May 3, prompting an international search. Three people have been named as suspects by the Portuguese police: the parents and Robert Murat, an expatriate Briton who lives in Praia da Luz. All have insisted that they are not guilty; the McCanns say their daughter was abducted.

Despite the lack of hard information — partly a consequence of secrecy rules that govern Portuguese police operations — the story continues to push other seemingly tabloid-friendly fare, like the jury inquest into the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, inside newspapers in Britain, Portugal and elsewhere.

The coverage has increased circulation at newspapers and kept a staff of public relations professionals, working on behalf of the McCanns, busy denying the latest leaks against them. British papers have benefited from a seemingly endless appetite for articles about the McCanns, fueling online and dinner-party debates about everything from the reliability of DNA evidence to the differences between British and Portuguese child care practices.

Among Portuguese newspapers, the mass-circulation Correio da Manhã has carried an article about the McCanns on its front page nearly every day since May 3, according to Leonardo Ralha, the social affairs editor at the paper. Circulation figures for recent months were not available yet, but he said that the coverage had had a very positive effect on sales.

Its a terrible word to use in a tragic case like this, he added, but the simple truth is that we have sold more newspapers.

While most journalists in Britain and in Portugal at first seemed united in sympathy toward the McCanns, the coverage and commentary around the case has taken on increasingly xenophobic tones.

In the British press, the Portuguese police have been widely portrayed as lazy bunglers. Portuguese commentators have found the McCanns insufficiently emotional and have questioned their parenting skills.

As for the McCanns, they initially courted media coverage, apparently in the hope that wider awareness of their daughters disappearance might help with the search. But they have tried to step out of the spotlight since they were named as suspects by the Portuguese police early in September.

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