DoubleTake: It's been 100 days since Madeleine McCann went missing, and journalists are under pressure for a splash - but at what cost?, asks Ann Marie Hourihane.
Madeleine McCann disappeared 100 days ago today. If only we could say that she hadn't been seen since. But no child has been more visible, as carefully released photographs of her cute little face have been plastered over newspaper front pages, placards at the shrine at Fatima, and even the windows of Irish homes. No parents have been more visible, either, than the McCanns, a photogenic couple who do not seem able to walk down a street without holding a cuddly toy belonging to their eldest daughter.
This media blitz has turned what is almost certainly a tragedy into a sort of freak show, and made gawkers of us all. The hysteria has been reminiscent of the death and funeral of the late Princess of Wales. It also seems to have been completely ineffective. Madeleine McCann is still missing. One hundred days is a long time for a four-year-old to be unaccounted for, and the Portuguese and British police do not appear to be any closer to finding the unfortunate child.
It is in the context of the 100-day anniversary that we must view the latest development in the McCann story. Because journalists covering the story will have been under pressure to come up with a big splash to mark it. The Portuguese police must know that the journalists are under the lash, and the McCann parents must know the same.
So the stories have started about blood stains being detected in the apartment from which Madeleine disappeared, giving us the Maddie-died-in-flat theory. The only suspect in the case, Robert Murat, has had the trees in his garden felled, as his home was searched again by Portuguese and British police. There has been an alleged sighting of Madeleine in Belgium (the DNA tests proved negative). In Switzerland, a convicted paedophile, Urs Hans Von Aesch, shot himself after being connected with the case. But, most significantly, the press looks as if it is turning on the McCann parents themselves.
To your average gawker, the behaviour of the McCanns has seemed strange from the start. They participated fully in media coverage of their daughter's disappearance. They always appear to be perfectly composed, and beautifully dressed. And gawking gets quite tiring. It is an uncomfortable moment when you are looking at television pictures of the mother of a child who has disappeared and the thing that strikes you most is that the mother's perfectly honed six-pack is visible under her tasteful vest; Kate McCann has been photographed jogging.
The McCanns have said that they made the decision on how they would participate in media coverage of their daughter's disappearance. They granted regular and constant access to the cameras - being photographed on their way to the shops, to Mass, to see the Pope, to the press conferences, frequently in the company of their younger twin children. The theory was that by allowing their photographs to be constantly taken, by giving strategic interviews when they so desired, they would keep their daughter's face on the front pages and so help her swift return.
As Madeleine fever swept across Europe - and children here are as familiar with Madeleine's face as they are with Avril Lavigne's - it never seems to have occurred to anyone that by maintaining such a high level of publicity the child's life may have been put in even more danger, by panicking her abductor.
It was noted quite early on that the Madeleine McCann tragedy is the perfect modern horror story: beautiful, professional parents (both Kate and Gerry McCann qualified as doctors), on holiday in paradise, undergo every parent's nightmare when their child is abducted by a faceless, monstrous intruder.
But this story can only run so long if both the monster and the little girl stay out of sight. At the beginning, little was made of the startling fact that the McCanns were dining some distance away at the time of their daughter's disappearance, leaving three children under the age of three completely unattended.
Back in England a local newspaper near the McCanns' hometown of Rothley closed down its website devoted to the case when this fact was repeatedly, and abusively, pointed out by local people - possibly the very same local people who were leaving pink teddy bears at the Madeleine McCann shrine in Rothley at the time.
Now the British press are turning on the Portuguese police, accusing them of incompetence, of turning on the McCanns and of leaking information to Portuguese newspapers such as Diário de Notícias and 24 Horas. According to 24 Horas this week, some of the friends who were holidaying with the McCanns at the time of Madeleine's disappearance - and there were seven of them - have been under police surveillance since their return to the UK.
So the story, having worn itself out over its first 100, is turning back towards home. There is now talk of a smear campaign against the McCanns, and Kate McCann is giving more interviews about how guilty she feels about having left the child unsupervised. Because gawking gets boring too, in the end. The child is still missing, and hope for her survival must be slim. Her parents' pact with the media is under severe strain.