Madeleine McCann’s father rounds on press

LAST UPDATED AT 12:48 ON Wed 11 Mar 2009

Gerry McCann, father of the missing toddler Madeleine McCann, has told MPs that while certain aspects of the media coverage were “undoubtedly helpful” as police and private detectives searched for their daughter, his family had been the focus of “some of the most sensationalist, untruthful, irresponsible and damaging reporting in the history of the press".

McCann was giving evidence on Tuesday to the Commons Culture Select Committee looking into press standards. He said that insinuations in the press that he and wife, Kate McCann, were somehow to blame for their daughter's disappearance from their Portugese holiday apartment in May 2007, led to hate mail and even to concern for their safety.

McCann blamed the development of what he called the "the Kate and Gerry show" on the fact that there were so few new facts to report in the wake of the three-year-old’s disappearance. "We saw pressure on journalists to produce stories when really there was nothing much to report.”

He added that it was "incredibly, unbelievably upsetting" to read newspaper stories intimating that he and his wife were involved in the disappearance. One such claim led to a legal action against the Express group of newspapers, for which the McCanns were awarded £550,000 in damages.

While McCann’s revelations about his treatment was received with all due seriousness by MPs, there were notable smirks when Max Mosley, the Formula 1 racing boss, went before the same Select Committee. Mosely is fighting for the introduction of a new privacy law after a Sunday tabloid story claimed last year that he had enjoyed a Nazi-themed sado-masochistic orgy with five call girls.

Mosley disputed the ‘Nazi’ aspect of the story – he admitted the orgy - and was subsequently awarded damages of £60,000 against the News of the World when his claim was upheld at the High Court. Asked by the committee if he felt the press could possibly regulate itself, he thought not. "It's like putting the Mafia in charge of the local police station," he said.

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