I've been grateful for the last week or so that I have access to non-UK news channels. If I hadn't I would have been largely snoozing my non-work hours away. Why? Because of this extremely tiresome missing girl story that is dominating the news networks.
I'm entirely empathetic towards the family affected but I'm being asked to care exponentially more about this particular missing child than any other. This I think is offensive.
It seems to me entirely arbitrary that her story has been picked up so heavily. Each news organisation has flown out some top names to cover this thing just because she's a cute little 3 year old. It's not like they have the excuse that it's a slow news period.
The end of the football season is looming, Blair has announced his resignation and Brown has walked on stage finally, the Iraq war is still in stalemate whilst Afghanistan gets scarcely a mention. In the days since Maddy's disappearence, dozens of Iraqis have died and several other kids have gone missing unreported.
The fact is I believe that something like 1000 kids (it might be people but either way...) go missing every year in Britain and one woman a week is killed by her partner. So what the hell makes this story any more worthwhile telling? There is no answer other than "because it caught on".
Live feeds of church services, reporters spending minutes on air reading cards on some street or other, interviews with anyone who shares blood with the kid, jingoistic criticism (learnt from Fox News, I shouldn't wonder) of the Portuguese police and all whilst a kid has not been found. It's a week long rolling report on essentially nothing happening and it bores me mental.
