If the payout to the McCanns by the Express group over repeated, completely untrue allegations, not just about their "involvement" in the abduction of their own child but also about their sex lives was embarrassing, then the truly unprecedented payout to Robert Murat by not just the Express papers but every single one of the daily tabloids with the exception of the Daily Sport, three of the Sunday tabloids and also the Scotsman is an indictment of a journalistic culture that regards the lives of those who are being written about as being of no concern whatsoever.
After the apology and payola for the McCanns, Murat's chances of a settlement were always going to be greatly increased. While the McCanns settled on going after the Express because of its clear for all to see race to the bottom, by far the most egregious offender against them, Murat was smeared by all and sundry, leaping to the most lurid conclusions based on the tiniest glimpses of so-called evidence. The Sun, for example, claimed that his computer had child pornography on it, and that he looked at various other questionable sexual websites; that Murat has since had his computers returned to him and no action has been taken for possession of child pornography suggests that these allegations were completely groundless. Anything that might suggest he was in any way strange or abnormal was also seized upon, such as the apparent fact that he joined in with children when his former employers hired a bouncy castle, or that he had been "in a hurry" when hiring a car. The Sun (again) even aired allegations it knew to be completely false, quoting a taxi driver who said that he had driven Murat, who had Madeleine with him on the night she went missing. That this couldn't have been possible because Madeleine had not disappeared at the time he claimed to have driven them didn't stop the paper from printing such abject garbage.
The award for starting the entire ball rolling though has to go to the Sunday Mirror and their reporter Lori Campbell. As Private Eye noted at the time, the paper already had form, having carried an interview the December before with a man called Tom Stephens, who had known some of the prostitutes murdered in and around Ipswich. The police swooped on this clearly distraught individual and swiftly released him after it became completely clear he had no involvement whatsoever with their deaths, distracting the investigation from the real quarry, Steve Wright. Campbell, with a heightened sense of what's creepy and what's not, decided that Murat's behaviour was akin to that of Ian Huntley's after the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and noblely reported her suspicions to the police: "[G]iven the unimaginable horrors which Madeleine's parents were enduring, it seemed the very least I could do," she said at the time. Murat's real crime it seems was not to have tried to get away from Praia da Luz, as you might expect someone involved in the kidnap of a child from the area to do, but instead to stay and help. Indeed, Murat had been helping the police with translating. For his concern about the missing child, he was treated to the finest which the British press has to offer. Lori Campbell meanwhile was nominated for Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.
Roy Greenslade has outlined three reasons for why this story has so revealed the British tabloids' true colours, lest they really needed exposing anyway: firstly, because this was happening in Portugal, hence they thought they could get away with pushing their coverage further towards the line than they could if this had occurred on British shores. This was undoubtedly a factor, but what also influenced their reporting what that they felt that they could simply get away with it in any case. Without the Express group going too far over the McCanns themselves, Murat would have almost certainly failed in bringing any sort of action. In an interview with the BBC he said his own savings had gone; his mother's were also beginning to dwindle, reducing his chances of bringing an expensive action down to almost nil. As it was, if the McCanns could get some sort of settlement, Murat almost certainly could also, and the firm acting for him, Simons Muirhead and Burton already act pro bono on human rights case. Whether they'll be waiving their fee in Murat's case is unclear.
What's more, it was financially viable in any case for the papers responsible to do so. Murat may receive £550,000 damages; split that 11 ways and it adds up to just £50,000 a newspaper, which to the Daily Mail and Sun especially is absolute peanuts. They've had a year of fun, boosted their circulations, brought in far more than that through their race to the bottom, competing with each other as to who could print the more lurid stories, and at the end of it they have to cough up a whole £50,000? To spout a cliche, they literally must be laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, it's embarrassing that they're going to have to apologise, although it's not clear whether the apologies will be front page specials like the Express's ones to the McCanns were, but has it any way affected the Express or Star in the long term? Of course not. They're still printing the same old crap as they were previously, and if a few readers take umbrage, that's a casualty of the game. This time round those disgusted by the tabloid's behaviour can't even switch to a different rag to show their displeasure: all of them were at it (unless they switch to a broadsheet, which is unlikely). A man's life and his subsequent employability doesn't matter one jot to the editors, the journalists responsible or the owners and shareholders; if it did, there would been grovelling apologies and payouts to Colin Stagg, completely ruined by the press campaign against him. He is instead being compensated by the state, when it should have been editors who demand law and order and tough penalties for everyone other than themselves who paid up.
Greenslade's final reason for why this occurred is that the press has been pushing against the contempt laws in this country for years, and that is undisputably the case. He's missed out a fourth, and most important reason though: churnalism. The whole Madeleine McCann disappearance fits entirely into Nick Davies' rules of production, the very first of which is run cheap stories. This might have taken place in Portugal, and so have had higher costs than cheap stories over here, but these were easily recouped by rises in circulation. In fact, journalists didn't have to necessarily even be in Praia da Luz, where nothing much happened anyway. The Express, for instance, spent most of its time copying out of the local Portuguese press, which was just as guilty, if not more so of printing complete garbage. Secondly, once the ball was rolling, it had to keep on going, meaning journalists had to come up with something even if there was nothing new to report. To suggest that complete fabrication in some cases did not take place would surely be a naive statement. This also inspires ninja turtle syndrome, where if one paper is printing it, the others have to regardless of its veracity.
I wrote after the payout to the McCanns that it changed absolutely nothing, and neither will this latest admittance that they went too far. The benefits of doing so are too large while the penalties are so few and so weak; Murat was very lucky, while the newspapers this time round were unfortunate. The libel system, and indeed, the Press Complaints Commission were drawn and set up not to protect the genuinely little people who find themselves in the crossfire through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were drawn up to protect the rich and the famous and the newspapers themselves respectively. The PCC is utterly toothless while the libel laws are now rightly being described as a worldwide disgrace. The vested interests and industry standards are so vast however that any change is simply unconsciousable, whether by politicians or those within the organisations themselves. Only when the public themselves actually stop buying the despicable rags will they be forced to change their ways. They show no signs of doing that.
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Enemies of Reason - Murat & libelLabels: abuses by tabloids, churnalism, libel, McCanns, Press Complaints Commission, Robert Murat, Robert Murat payout, street of shame, tabloid mendacity
