by The Madeleine Foundation, 15 April 2011
Today was the 1,442nd day since Madeleine McCann was reported missing by her parents. That’s 206 weeks, nearly 4 years.
Today was also a day when many members of the British public managed to find out a whole lot more facts about the case.
We have the Daily Mail to thank for that. For within a two-page feature article about Madeleine and the McCanns in today’s ediiton, the Mail informed its readers:
* about our organisation, and
* about our website, and
* about our letter to Transworld which suggested 163 questions that Dr Kate McCann should answer in her forthcoming book about the case, and
* about the leaflet we are distributing, known as ’50 FACTS’, which on four pages of A4 summarises some of the disturbing facts about the case.
The Mail, additionally, gave its readers the title of the leaflet: ‘What happened to Madeleine McCann? 50 facts about the case that the British media are not telling you’.
It even informed readers of the four main sections of the leaflet:
1) Major contradictions in the statements of the McCanns and their friends
2) The highly trained police dogs who detected the scent of a corpse
3) Strange things the McCanns have said and done, and
4) How the McCanns wasted public money on useless private detectives.
It also mentioned our first book on the case: “What Really Happened To Madeleine McCann? 60 Reasons To Suggest She Was Not Abducted”, now effectivley a banned book in view of the McCanns’ threat to sue for libel over its contents.
What has been the outcome of the Daily Mail’s article so far?
There were thousands of extra hits on our website; the final figures for the day are not in yet, at the time of writing this article
News of the publication and availability of the leaflet was circulated on Facebook, tweeted, and re-tweeted many times
A new blog about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, “What happened to Madeleine McCann”, has received 4,200 new visits today so far
The leaflet was placed on the popular forum: ‘Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’. By this evening, over 1,500 had seen it there
The petition for a full public enquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance, sponsored by Madeleine Foundation member Alan-Marc Logoa, gained another 16 signatures, bringing the total to 584
The Mail article has been read by millions, many of whom sent comments to its online comments page. Many of these comments were critical of the McCanns, and these McCann-sceptic comments were voted up in their hundreds, using green arrows, by readers
Several people asked for supplies of the leaflet to distribute in their home areas
We received new orders for our latest book on the case: ‘The Madeleine McCann Case Files: Volume 1’, and
We received new enquiries about membership.
This response has echoes of a previous occasion when the media slated The Madeleine Foundation, following distribution of another leaflet about the case, ’10 Reasons’. The distribution of the leaflet to 150 houses in the McCanns’ home village, Rothley, led to adverse press headlines. But the Madeleine Foundation was named, and in the weeks that followed, tens of thousands visited our website, hundreds of our ‘60 Reasons’ book were sold, many more offered to distribute leaflets, and we gained 20 new members.
While the media may portray us as unjustified hounders of the McCanns, the fact is that many of the British public want to know more about the facts in this case, and are hungry for further information.
The reaction to today’s Mail article proves that once again.
Daily Mail: Reopening the wounds
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