I don't think the media Maddie thing is wrong. We should all be in shock whenever a child is abducted and our news and papers should be full of stories. I think the problem with the media is that they don't cover the other things well enough or bring them into the public domain. If my child was taken i would want EVERYONE to know and to have seen her face. Its not doing any harm just ensuring that as many people know about the situation as possible. I cant imagine what the family are going through.

I see where you are comming from. Perhaps it is most widely covered because there is more information available about it. Some times it's just a media face. A "small girl" was kidnapped, vs. a "41 yo computer technician". I think this applies to the "schapelle corby" case in which a young female was accused of drug smuggling. A 28yo man accused of drug smuggling would be given far less priority and importance. So I guess you are right. But there's so much you can do about it. Ultimately, what the media portrays influences what we think. Like females are more innocent than males, or that parents are responsible for a childs behaviour and personality or even that beating a child is wrong.

I also see where you are coming from. The British media has latched onto the kidnapping of a cute blonde child, when cute black children and cute asian children are being kidnapped with none of the ensuing publicity. While not wanting to deny Madeleine's parents the possibility of getting her back unharmed, I wonder if the large amounts of money being thrown around might not encourage other abductions. As I said in answer to a similar question, we, in our suburb of Liverpool Sydney Australia, have a little Arabic background child who has been missing for 18 months now, taken from inside her own bedroom. But the media did not take up her case, and she is still missing and not a lead.

I live in the same village as her parents, i do not know them but feel sorry for them as i walk past their house everyday to get to school. I can see the media cars parked outside their house and the police car that is parked in their driveway 24 hours a day. When they arrived back home from portugal there were 2 helecopters following them all the way from the airport, it must be so annoying and stresfull for them knowing that as soon as they walk out their front door the media will jump all over them and ask they as many questions as thay can. Recently the media have slowly decided that they do not need to know when the family go to the park or wipe their ass after being on the toilet, and they have retreated. Their used to be 4 TV vans at the local village green. Now their are non, and this morning was the first time i saw only one reporter sitting outside their driveway.

I think all the newspapers contradict each other with deatails. I think other world issues should be covered more. If I see a picture of that child again I'm going to scream!

She's a cute, white, blonde-haired, light-eyed little British girl. Naturally, her disappearance is going to take precedence over that of a missing asian, african or arabic girl. Society feels very uncomfortable and concerned with the notion of a missing white girl or woman. Not so much with a missing coloured or ethnic woman or person. Personally, I think her case is very, very sad. I would love for her to be returned safely to her parents. Sadly, her case is just the tip of the iceberg of missing children cases.

It's true that there's no proportion in what we pay attention to. Witness the reaction to the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 in the U.S.: so many things in our culture have changed in fearful response to this incident. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy... but -- every year 1/2 million people die of heart disease in the U.S. Cancer is similarly huge. Even septicemia, which most people have trouble spelling, kills 34,000 each year. This is just a function of our psychology: our attention isn't "evenly distributed" -- we latch on to some things much more than other things -- and the dynamics of what draws our attention are not rational. So the audience can more easily connect emotionally to the disappearance of a single white child from the suburbs than it can to the slaughter of a dozen black children in a village somewhere in Darfur. This doesn't mean the audience is wicked, or the media is wicked... it really just means we're asleep -- we don't notice vast quantities of things which are often more important from a rational perspective than the things we do notice. Rather than rail against some abstract thing ("the media?"), I think it's best to step in front of the mirror and ask myself: where is my attention captivated by some small thing and ignoring the big things?