The Star (or Mail or Guardian) Chamber

I'm a little bit confused by all the media attention on the McCann's at the moment, especially as there seem to be two schools of thought. The first is the suggestion that one parent had an accident which result in their daughter's death and then covered it up for several weeks whilst arousing absolutely no suspicion whatsoever from family, friends or indeed the police.
The second line that is taken is that foreign police forces are incompetent and are less than fastidious at investigating crimes which involve British nationals as the victims and also try to hide deficiencies in their own judicial system in order to protect their tourist industry.

Just like Mulder we all know that the truth is out there somewhere. We will probably never know exactly what happened on that night in the Algarve other than a child went missing, may well still be missing and that there are parents showing every sign of being torn apart by personal tragedy which is being closely scrutinised both at home and abroad.

This of course leads me back to one of my favourite topics - how responsible the media are (or rather aren't), this case in particular causes me considerable concern as the balance between keeping the search for a missing child and reporting the progress of the police investigation along with any little snippet of gossip/rumour about what may have been discovered by a forensic examination - and indeed why any evidence may be flawed is clearly tilting at the moment towards the assumption that an arrest is imminent. Regardless of whatever the outcome is the media need once again to look towards themselves and their very fluid definition of what is in the public interest.