LSE Event 30/01/2008

The Speakers/The Event

30 January 2008, 6.30 - 8.00pm, New Theatre, LSE: The McCanns and the Media: Information vs. Entertainment Confirmed speakers: PR expert Justine McGuiness, McCanns spokesperson Clarence Mitchell, media commentator Roy Greenslade, McCanns documentary maker David Mills, Dispatches Executive Producer Roger Graef and former Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie. The debate will be chaired by broadcaster and Guardian columnist Steve Hewlett. The McCanns and the Media Date: Wednesday 30 January 2008 Time: 6.30pm Venue: New Theatre, East Building Speakers: Clarence Mitchell, Justine McGuiness, Kelvin MacKenzie, Roy Greenslade, Roger Graef Chair: Steve Hewlett The McCanns were the biggest media story of 2007. This event goes behind the headlines to ask why it became a media obsession, whether information or entertainment triumphed, and what impact the coverage has as the case continues. Steve Hewlett is a media consultant and former BBC editor. Roy Greenslade is a media commentator, columnist and blogger, and Professor of Journalism at City University. Kelvin MacKenzie is former editor of the Sun, firmly establishing it as Britain's biggest selling newspaper. Clarence Mitchell is a former BBC royal correspondent and now spokesman for the McCanns. Justine McGuinness is a PR guru who manages the Find Madeleine campaign.  Roger Graef was the executive producer of the recent Dispatches which featured the McCanns.  This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

The Podcast

The McCanns and the Media   Speakers: Clarence Mitchell; Justine McGuiness; Kelvin MacKenzie; Roy Greenslade; Roger Graef Chair: Steve Hewlett   This event was recorded on 30 Jan 2008 in New Theatre, East Building   The McCanns were the biggest media story of 2007. This event goes behind the headlines to ask why it became a media obsession, whether information or entertainment triumphed, and what impact the coverage has as the case continues. Steve Hewlett is a media consultant and former BBC editor. Roy Greenslade is a media commentator, columnist and blogger, and Professor of Journalism at City University. Kelvin MacKenzie is former editor of the Sun, firmly establishing it as Britain's biggest selling newspaper. Clarence Mitchell is a former BBC royal correspondent and now spokesman for the McCanns. Justine McGuinness is a PR guru who manages the Find Madeleine campaign. Roger Graef was the executive producer of the recent Dispatches which featured the McCanns.   Full podcast available here: mp3 (23 mb; approx 99 minutes)

What Clarence Mitchell said about the support of the UK police and CEOP

Following the LSE meeting most newspapers declared that the McCanns were now 'not suspects' in the UK.   But what did Clarence Mitchell actually say about the support of the UK police and CEOP?   Here are his exact words, with an mp3 clip below:    'I've also had briefings privately from the police and CEOP, Child Exploitation Online Potection Centre', before I went out the first time, that also gave me complete reassurance that the authorities in this country, certainly, are treaing this as a case of rare stranger abduction - as they call it'.   - Notice these private briefings happened 'before I went out the first time' - Clarence is talking about briefings that happened in May 2007 when most people knew very little of what had actually happened. Listen to Mitchell's quote here

Roy Greenslade's preview/review of the event, Guardian 31.01.08 (link)

The McCanns and the media: join tonight's 'heated debate'   Wednesday 30.01.08 Roy Greenslade / Events 02:45pm   I'm unsure what will emerge from a debate tonight about the media coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearance. But, given the cast list on a rather crowded panel, it does promise to offer heat, if not light. Among the speakers who have indicated that they will attend are two former editors: Kelvin MacKenzie, ex-Sun boss, and now a columnist, and Neil Wallis, ex-People editor and now the News of the World's executive editor. From the Gerry and Kate McCann "camp" come Clarence Mitchell, their spokesman, and Justine McGuinness, manager of the Find Madeleine campaign. Two TV programme-makers are also expected: Roger Graef, executive producer of the recent Dispatches about the case, and David Mills, producer of the recent Panorama which he then disowned. There will be two regular Guardian writers too: Steve Hewlett, a former BBC editor and presenter of an interesting media series on Radio 4 at present, and myself. Entry to the LSE's New Theatre is free. But it's first come, first served. And it all kicks off at 6.30pm. --- The McCanns' debate: from banality to an outpouring of bile   January 31, 2008 12:15 AM   I feared that last night's debate on "The McCanns and the media" (see posting immediately below) would generate more heat than light. In fact, it generated neither heat nor light. Aside from some persistent interruptions from a group of misguided, self-appointed busy-bodies, the standing-room-only event at the LSE was marked by its banality. That doesn't mean that we didn't hear interesting views, but - as a debate - it never took off. It didn't help that two-thirds of the panel were required to sit "off stage", thereby limiting the ease of participation. On the other hand, we did get a glimpse of the irrational prejudice blighting the whole affair. It began well enough when Kelvin MacKenzie opened with a reasonably measured and thoughtful contribution that rightly pointed to several remarkable features of the McCanns saga that had helped to make it into what he hyperbolically called "the greatest story of my lifetime." But he mostly made a lot of good sense. Social class had played a part in the media's immediate interest and in helping to catch the public's imagination. He revealed that he had shown an understanding for the plight of Gerry and Kate McCann but readers of his Sun column had not. He spoke of "10,000 emails" that were overwhelmingly hostile to the McCanns for having left their children in their bedroom unsupervised. His readers did not share his sympathy for the couple and, by implication, that had changed his mind somewhat. I was altogether less enamoured with his defence of papers, especially the Express titles, for publishing wildly inaccurate stories. Kelvin's defence? Newspapers are commercial operations and you must expect them to publish stories calculated to increase sales. The temptation to ramp up circulation was too great to resist. That doesn't wash with me at all. Next up was Clarence Mitchell, the official spokesman for the McCanns. He launched a broadside on a press guilty of carrying speculative stories without any basis in truth. Stories, incidentally, which he had often formally denied before publication. He explained how British journalists relied for most of their stories on the Portuguese papers that also ran speculative and unverifiable material. After being spun in British tabloids, the Portuguese then picked them up the following day, pretending that the fact they had appeared in the British press was "proof" of their veracity. In other words, it was a constant recycling of gossip and innuendo, none of it based on fact. Mitchell's concern about trying to deal with a rampant global media was echoed in the experiences of his predecessor in the role, Justine McGuinness. She spoke of the immense scale of media interest, implying that it was virtually impossible to cope with a hydra-headed media beast demanding daily, almost hourly, feeds. Roger Graef, producer of Channel 4's Dispatches on the mystery of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, spoke of the surreal, Kafkaesque nature of making a documentary in which there were (and are) no facts and about which no-one has any genuine knowledge, including the Portuguese police. David Mills is the man who produced a documentary for Panorama and then disowned it because key material - some of it critical of the Portuguese police - was omitted. He was concerned about the media's failure to hold the police to account and complained about the dearth of proper investigative journalism about the case. So far, so good. But once the debate was opened out to the audience by chairman Steve Hewlett, it went nowhere helpful. A vociferous group who have formed an organisation called The Madeleine Foundation showed a lamentable grasp of debating rules by interrupting speakers and shouting out a string of offensive comments about the McCanns and their PRs. Their anger may have been sincere, but it became abundantly clear that they are infected with prejudice. Many of the claims they made - about money donated to the McCanns' fund, about payments to PRs, about the McCanns' actions and relationship with the police - were obviously based on the inaccurate accusations and innuendos published by so many newspapers. However, reflecting on the debate on my journey home, I realised that they represented the authentic voice of so many British people, the Sun readers Kelvin had mentioned and probably the readers of all popular papers. It is not pretty. Their unconcealed bile, their lack of compassion for the McCanns, their sanctimonious statements about the supposed parenting inadequacies of the McCanns, do not stem wholly from poor reporting. Certainly, false stories have contributed to their fallacious arguments. But they were uninterested in the rational statements of Mitchell and McGuinness. They took no notice of the subtle arguments of Graef and Mills. They were the equivalent of those mobs outside courts in murder trials, deaf to facts, cocooned from reality by their own self-righteous demagoguery. Their major aim, outlined in a "manifesto" circulated within the lecture theatre, is to see the McCanns prosecuted for "abandoning" their children. The newspapers that have retailed nonsense about this case do have a lot to answer for. But then so do the people, do they not? What the debate never touched on was whether the media could, even eight months' on, play a positive role to counter the misinformation that appears now to have taken such a grip among the population.

Steve Hewlett: Mechanics of the McCann campaign (link)

Mechanics of the McCann campaign   Professional media management may have generated coverage of Maddy's disappearance, but it hasn't helped with public sympathy for the family   January 31, 2008 2:30PM   A Media Society/Polis debate last night saw Gerry and Kate McCann's current and former spokespeople - Clarence Mitchell and Justine McGuinness - discuss the media and the McCanns with Kelvin MacKenzie, Roy Greenslade and filmmakers Roger Graef and David Mills. I should say in the interests of transparency that I chaired the event in front of a packed house at the LSE in London. The big question set out for debate by the organisers was how well (or badly) had the press and media done in their coverage of what must surely be the most reported story of the last nine months. Consensus among the speakers was pretty negative and Clarence Mitchell was utterly scathing, accusing some journalists of peddling information they knew to be wrong or unfounded - largely for the purpose of stoking up sales. MacKenzie, ex-editor of the Sun, cautioned the audience against being too censorious on the grounds that it was their fascination with the story that led newspapers - which are, after all, commercial entities - to deal with it so prominently and frequently. MacKenzie then went on to say two things that in my view had rather greater resonance in the meeting than any of the relatively predictable press bashing - no matter how justified. He said that the public response to his Sun column, which he said was characteristic of Sun readers (ie somewhat downmarket in demographic terms), can be huge but was overwhelmingly negative towards Kate and Gerry McCann. Having left their children alone in the apartment while going out for a good time with friends has not gone down well - with the Sun's readership at least, not to mention quite a few folk in last evening's LSE audience. This is not to suggest that most (or even many) readers think they're guilty in any sense; more that they've been complicit in their own misfortune by being less-than-attentive parents. This more starkly than anything else, it was suggested, reveals the class-based nature of public responses not so much to the calamity of Madeleine's disappearance as to her family's efforts since. And on that front MacKenzie went on to say - even more tellingly perhaps - that in the public mind PR and truth were rarely thought to sit comfortably together. And there's the rub. Try as they might neither Clarence Mitchell nor Justine McGuinness could quite shake off the sense that the way they've managed this case might have contributed to some negative public sentiment towards the family. In place initially as what Mitchell described as "a buffer" between the shocked and distraught parents and the world's media, hungry for news about Madeleine, it's clear that what developed was a professional media management operation. With city PR firm Bell Pottinger on hand - primarily, we can assume, to defend the interests of their clients Mark Warner Holidays - as well as Justine and, latterly, Clarence with all their experience of Westminster spin, the McCanns could not have wanted for more professional advice. But as time went on media management itself - and once you've started feeding stories to the press to get control of the agenda, you really can't stop - began generating negative reaction from other parties. Portuguese journalists found people close to the McCanns unwilling to speak for fear of breaking an agreement that Kate and Gerry would pre-authorise anything that was to be said in public. This is standard media management in Westminster or the City but it struck some in Portugal, who thought they were simply dealing with an utterly distraught family, as so strange as to be suspicious. The Portuguese police, however slow and incompetent they might have been, found themselves on the wrong end of a very high powered media onslaught - orchestrated and facilitated in no small measure by what became the McCann campaign. They may not have been ideally equipped or experienced to deal with the case of a disappeared child but they certainly weren't prepared to find themselves up against professional media managers. In many ways, it's hard to see what else Kate and Gerry McCann could have done; offered the same kind of assistance, how many of us would have turned it down if we thought it might help to get our missing child back? Nevertheless, it's hard to avoid at least a nagging sense of unease about aspects of the "campaign" which would appear to be reflected in what some people think about Kate and Gerry McCann.

Madeleine: Information or entertainment? Sky News 31.01.08 (link)

Madeleine: Information Or Entertainment? Angela Corpe Sky News reporter Updated:08:46, Thursday January 31, 2008 There is no question that the McCanns were the biggest media story of 2007, but was the mass of media coverage information of entertainment? The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell and former editor of The Sun Kelvin MacKenzie attempted to answer that question last night at the London School of Economics. "The most significant story of my lifetime" was how Kelvin MacKenzie described it and one which he said will be in all our lives until Madeleine is found. He told a packed auditorium that he received 10,000 emails from Sun readers after writing a piece which said we should have sympathy for the McCanns. Almost all, he said, told him he was a scumbag and that he had no idea how ordinary people felt. "They said had this been a single black mother from Brixton I would have been saying she should be hung." And he admitted "you should all wonder if there may be some truth in that." So why, on the one hand, was there such a public outpouring of support for the McCanns which raised £1.2 million pounds for the fund to find Madeleine, and on the other newspaper readers baying for Gerry and Kate's blood? Kelvin MacKenzie described it as a "class war" saying people simply made up their mind from the very beginning. As soon as the public found out that the couple had left their three children alone in the holiday apartment night after night, they fell into two categories; those who could empathise, who'd perhaps done the same thing themselves and realised how easily it could have been their child, others who felt the McCanns were somehow deserving of something happening, and that they should be charged with negligence. The latter group were well represented at the debate - a couple handed out leaflets entitled "The Madeleine Foundation, combating child neglect". In it they demanded the McCanns "tell the truth" about Madeleine's disappearance, asked for an investigation into the Find Madeleine Fund and called for Kate and Gerry to be prosecuted for leaving their children alone. Even if the public had already made up their own minds, Clarence Mitchell said the coverage by some newspapers certainly didn't help. The former Royal Correspondent for the BBC said he felt "shamed" as a journalist by the "appalling standards, sloppiness and laziness of journalism" and the lack of basic fact-checking which left him having to deny allegations on a daily basis. Lawyers for the McCanns are still reviewing some of the coverage which Mr Mitchell said was not only "distorted, but wilfully misrepresentative at times of the facts as we known them". Whilst co-operating with the media meant Madeleine's image was displayed all over Britain, mainland Europe and even North Africa is also meant the McCanns themselves came under the spotlight, and none more so than when they became "Arguidos" or suspects. Do they have any regrets? I am sure they have many, but Mr Mitchell said the family remained grateful for the positive reporting since Madeleine disappeared, and he said he would defy any family in the McCann's situation not to do the same. "The Media" he said "is a very powerful weapon" and it is, but it is also a double-edged sword.