It was a month when we might have expected things to calm down in the McCann story, but instead editors and reporters have been furiously barking up all the wrong trees

A month ago the only story about Madeleine McCann was that her home village of Rothley in Leicestershire had decided to remove the rain-drenched yellow ribbons that adorned the local war memorial. There was no question of giving up hope, insisted Brian Kennedy, a great-uncle of the missing girl, but "we think the time's come to move on a bit".

A straw in the wind, you might have been forgiven for thinking. A small sign that what has been described, with only a little exaggeration, as the biggest child abduction story since the Lindbergh case might finally be slipping out of the limelight.

Not so, because the intervening weeks have given us a second McCann frenzy rivalling the first, but which, for a great deal of the time, seemed to be founded on very little. "Important" and "credible" new witnesses have surfaced; there have been "dramatic new developments" and several times we have been "on the verge of a major breakthrough", yet again and again the stories led nowhere.

One dramatic new development, you may recall, was the second search of the home of Robert Murat, the long-term official suspect. Despite the supposedly significant presence of British detectives, this produced nothing, and the police were apparently left closer to eliminating Murat from their inquiries than arresting him.

There was also the Belgian sighting, in which a "highly credible" witness reported seeing Madeleine at a motorway service station near the Dutch border. That too slipped off the front pages unceremoniously after a DNA sample from a bottle turned out to be a man's.

Next came the speck of blood in the bedroom from which the child was taken. Discovered by a British spaniel, no less, this took reporters into whole new realms of speculation for several days (Was Madeleine murdered as she slept, and then spirited away?) - until DNA tests again showed it was not evidence of anything at all.

As I write we are once again promised a major breakthrough, with Portuguese police allegedly poised for decisive action. It may turn out to be genuinely important and it may not: I know I am not alone, though, in a weary scepticism about the reporting of this story. There has been far too much crying wolf.

You have to wonder about the judgement of editors, such as those at the Express and the Mirror, who have been persistently putting these stories on the front page only to see them turn into squibs. Or do they calculate that if they keep on banging away in this fashion, then one day a story will come good and they will be able to claim they got it right?

Whatever the reasons behind it, this approach can only breed confusion and cynicism among readers - and, in turn, television viewers - and I can't imagine that it brings anything but anxiety to the McCann family, whose feelings the same papers want us to know they care so much about.

The family, it is true, have probably contributed to the problem. The eagerness over the past month for a McCann story - any McCann story - was no doubt related to the 100th day since the disappearance, and the girl's parents were more responsible than anyone for drawing attention to that date. Kate McCann in particular gave her first series of lengthy interviews in Portugal as it approached, in a deliberate effort to keep the case in the public mind.

But that hardly justifies the spiral of excitability and poor judgement we have seen. And as each supposed breakthrough fizzled out someone else always had to be blamed. Usually it was the Portuguese police, who may not have covered themselves in glory in this case, but who do not have responsibility for how their doings are reported. The other chief culprit when things go wrong is the Portuguese press, which is said to be mean-spirited and unreliable. Imagine that.

The next thing to royalty

The Belfast News Letter has a strong claim to be the oldest English-language newspaper in continuous production in the world, and when it celebrated its 250th birthday back in 1987 its managers and staff had high hopes of a royal visit. The Times of London had turned 200 a couple of years earlier, after all, and the Queen marked that occasion by visiting its offices, not once, but twice.

Word came back, however, that no member of the royal family felt able to attend the News Letter festivities, presumably because of the sensitivities of Northern Ireland politics. So the paper turned instead to a journalist who enjoyed the highest respect and affection, and who not only lent charm and grace to the occasion, but gave a rather better speech than can normally be expected from princes and dukes. Who was this hack who ranked as the next best thing to royalty? It could only have been Bill Deedes.

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University

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