McCann's Re Publicity

There has been criticism about why is this couple out there publicising this, doing interviews, going in front of cameras, going through photo opportunities? If you look at what would have happened in the UK, you would have had, probably within hours, a proactive intervention by British police, who would have said this is the process we now need to go through.But Kate and Gerry had been largely left to get on with it, with no support in the initial stages, or guidance. They realised the media were a huge potential ally and went fo it. I would do the same and I don't think there is any parent that would not, faced with the same circumstances.Perhaps they did this publicity because they had no help from the PJ, no family liason officer, they were left to get on with things on their own. Foreign Country, unfamiliar surroundings. Do not speak the language. Fear/panic.The Child Rescue Alert system was launched here (GB) nationally only last year, (2007) and is based on the Amber Alert system that runs in the US. Essentially, the system relies on the media being told at the earliest stage, to encourage the public to act as the "eyes and ears of the police". At a local level, at least, this appears to have been done in Portugal, as people were out searching for Madeleine very quickly, but the national level of this earch does not seem to have been put into operation.In GB there basically 4 levels of criteria that need to be met
(1) The child is apparently under the age of 18-yrs-old;
(2) There is reasonable belief that the child has been kidnapped or abducted;
(3) There is reasonable belief that the child is in imminent danger of serious harm or death; (4) There is sufficient information available to enable the public to assist the police in locating the child

How much of this was actually met in the early days of the Madeleine investigation? The authorising officer in the UK (IN Madeleine’s case the PJ) would have allowed for a circulation of an alert to all the media outlets the individual force has agreements with, which will contain some or all of the following:

• Description of the child
• Scanned photo of the child
• Details of location and nature of the offence
• Description of the offender(s) CCTV/photo of the offender(s)

By comparison to this, the PJ didn't even get a photograph of Madeleine released until day 4 of the of the investigation.The McCann's it appears had been left tp get on with this themselves and they played it the way they thought they should, if the Pj wanted it played differently, they should not have left them alone to try and aorganise the media side of this search themselves.