A VOICE OF REASON

For me personally there are only a handful of politicians and political commentators who I would class as a “voice of reason”. One of these is Mathew Parris, who has been writing in today’s Times. Whilst not strictly a political issue, he does look at the heart rendering position of Madeleine McCann and her parents Gerry and Kate. Nobody can appreciate what these two people are going through, and the episode has touched certainly all those who live in this country, if not all of Europe, such is the media coverage of her disappearance. However, it is this coverage that Parris now questions.

The present lull in coverage has revealed a terrible fact, “Nothing has been learnt. Nothing has emerged.” He then goes on to make the telling comment “Yet the story has dominated the news, and several innocent people have been indelibly defamed. What good has this done?” At this point I was on the verge of having to revaluate my opinion of Matthew; surely this publicity served it’s own purpose in that it spread the word of the disappearance and projected images far more wide spread than the police could ever have achieved in the same time? Several lines later he makes his real point;

“the confluence over a protracted period of heavy and continuous news coverage with a complete absence of news ought to prompt some soul searching. You may say “mystery” is in itself a story, but I’m afraid this is not really a great mystery. There is something faintly but unmistakably sick in this prolonged churning of public sentiment and public fascination”

In reality, Parris has told us that the emperor has no clothes on. His views give rise to the question what about the thousands of other children who disappear every year in this country alone? What about those who suffer from sexual abuse, drug problems and those dragged into the sex trade? South Tyneside’s children’s hospital wards are full of babies and children who will die of cancer, heart problems or accidents. Do they not also deserve a voice?

The McCann situation is heartbreaking, and because of this, whilst we may have reservations as to the degree of un-relentless coverage, we reservedly don’t speak our concerns. Perhaps Parris has done it for us, and now is the time to turn the volume down.