Trial by TV
We all want a conclusion to this story. It has to be said that it was with a sense of relief that at last something was happening that we watched the news the other night of Robert Murat’s arrest and the house search. It was chillingly familiar to the Soham murders; a local man hanging around the crime scene. And of course he had a dodgy glass eye as well as a shady past so suddenly two plus two made four and here was our man.
It was interesting to see how the Sky news reporter (not their brilliant correspondent Martin Brunt who has been calm and sanguine throughout) went from thinking Robert Murat was quite a “good bloke” to the chief suspect as the course of the news report went on.
He may very well be guilty. Only he really knows. But the fact is whatever else happens; his life as he knows it is over. If they don’t catch the abductor then he will face suspicion and possibly hatred wherever he goes. As he told Martin Brunt yesterday; “my life is ruined”.
This has the appearance of a witch hunt. No one knows anything about this man apart from the fact that he’s slightly dodgy. Slightly dodgy is not a crime and the media is no judge.
The local police are obviously desperate to come up with something. This has dragged on far too long. But to me the only crime so far has been Maddy’s abduction and to a much lesser extent the ineptitude of the police in the hours that followed. I am sure vital clues went missing then. Clues that could probably have determined Robert Murat’s innocence or otherwise, without this trial by TV.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007
16 May 2007 helena
Agree with your comments entirely. It seemed to have all started with a young blond female reporter from, I believe, the Daily Mirror. For some reason she decided the poor man was peculiar and passed this on to a Sky News reporter. Why she did this one can only guess. The Sky man, presumably being rather bored, picked it up and elaborated. Personally, I have come across this media reaction on a previous occasion when searching for a serial killer. These reporters are reasonably intelligent, but a menace when then they get bored and there is little for them to say - all very dangerous and little help in the main aim: to find this little girl.
I obviously think that this has been a dreadful thing, but at the same time I also think that the media circus around it is an equally dreadful thing. We now know that the media is kept out of investigations in Portugal and that names of suspects or arrested are not published. The English way of conducting business or criminal investigations via the media (and in particular papers like the Daily Mail etc) is not what I would expect in a serious democracy. I am quietly wondering how come we don’t get the same kind of hysteria every two seconds when a child dies from hunger, or indeed if the people contributing to the funds for this particular child ever think of giving to other less attractive little girls from Darfor.
I just told my husband yesterday that this whole thing was reminding me more of the Norwich/Ipswich murders suspect fumbling (which was well-covered here in North America) than any child abduction I could remember. He agreed with me. Of course, perhaps the Portuguese law code does not make the presumption of innocence that we are used to, and I’m not quite certain from what I’ve seen (not that I want to read *too* much) whether it’s Portuguese or English police, or both, handling the investigation, under what law. But I do feel - though it is only feeling, I admit - that, whether or not I would like Mr. Murat for a next-door neighbor or a luncheon partner, whoever did take Madeleine is long, long, long gone.
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An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible