Powerpoint de l'intervention de Clarence Mitchell
Congrès des Relations publiques de Dubai - 8/12.11.2009
Clarence
Mitchell, official spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, tells a
Dubai audience how he
used PR to battle with the press during the search for their missing
daughter.
Paul McClennan - 15 .11.2009
EVEN BY Clarence Mitchell's own admission, there has never been a search quite like the one launched two-and-a-half years ago for Madeleine McCann.
EVEN BY Clarence Mitchell's own admission, there has never been a search quite like the one launched two-and-a-half years ago for Madeleine McCann.
It was a story that shocked the world,
said Clarence Mitchell, as an opening remark to
a presentation
he gave last week at the
PR Congress in Dubai. Mitchell, a former BBC journalist of 20
years, quit his role as
director of media
monitoring at the British government's Central Office of Information in
September 2007, to handle
the McCanns' PR full
time.
He was quick to point out to delegates that
He was quick to point out to delegates that
There is no evidence to suggest Madeleine is dead, and until the family know that for sure then we will continue to look for her.
Only last
week, the McCann's
issued new pictures of Maddie to the media, illustrating how her
appearance would have changed since
she went missing on 3
May 2007 in Portugal. Mitchell believes Maddie, aged four at the
time, is still widely talked
about due to the fact
her disappearance occurred during the digital age.
Madeleine is the first, and most high-profile, missing child case in the internet era.
Recalling the early days of the
Maddie case, Mitchell said,
The Portuguese police thought it suspicious that a government advisor should turn up, but it was only because of all the media attention [that I was appointed]. I remember standing on the balcony counting 42 TV crews from around the world. It was a phenomenal situation which no family could have coped with.
Mitchell said
the McCann family then
had to endure leaks and
rumours which emerged from Portugal, due to a "lack of evidence",
surrounding Maddie's
disappearance.
Stories were picked up by the British media and were mistranslated. So we had a distortion of the original distortion - it was a complete cycle of lunacy. There were soon debates for and against the McCanns and that needed to be monitored. Where it strayed into libel we took action because it was imperative to set down a marker.
It wasn't long before Mitchell had to call upon his PR
skills to help shape the stories that were published about Maddie.
A few months later I needed to get positive messages out into the media and rebuff the lies. We had to challenge the preconceptions - this was done privately with editors. We had to establish our own narrative and key message. Journalists were hounding everyone who knew the McCanns. Reporters came to the door every day. For six months there were photographers at the end of the driveway, photographers crawling through hedges looking for them. Journalists wanted material for the 20-day and 50-day anniversaries - it was ridiculous. British newspapers did step out of line and we had 108 grossly defamatory headlines from the Express Newspaper's four titles, based on misinformation coming out of Portugal. We recived front page apologies and £500,000 damages which went to the search fund. We also had apologies News of the World for printing parts of Kate's diary.
Mitchell
and the McCanns still have to be prepared for factually incorrect
stories, such as false sightings, appearing
in the papers.
We always have to act swiftly against rubbish being disseminated in the media. But if you respect the media they will respect you back. The age of 'no comment' has gone - you have to engage,
said Mitchell,
who sometimes fields 300
calls a day from journalists around the world writing about the case. Another
challenge
he is faced with is
releasing fresh information to the media at the right time:
For the first anniversay we had to offer the press something decent to keep the interest going so we did Panorama and Hello!. For the second anniversary Oprah had been chasing us for some time so we worked with her. [The broadcast was televised in 144 countries.] I have 120 interview bids on the table for Kate and Gerry, from their local paper in Leicestershire to Larry King. We have also worked with Al Jazeera because we feel there's a chance Madeleine could be in the north of Africa.
TV
appearances
were not easy for the
McCanns, who were closely scrutinised every time they appeared in front
of the television cameras.
The police told them from the outset not to show emotion in interviews because there are cases when kidnappers get satisfaction from seeing the distress they've caused. So Kate and Gerry did this but were then vilified across Portuguese media for being too cold and suspicious. Then when Kate did break down and cry people said she was just crying crocodile tears.
When asked by Media Week how the public viewed
PR following Maddie's
disappearance, Mitchell
said,
I think the public, for various reasons, can be suspicious about PR - they don't see it as necessary and that it's there to hide and confuse. But that is categorically not the case in this instance. He also said that Arabic coverage of the case tended to be neutral.
Mitchell wrapped up
the talk by saying he hoped
media interest in Maddie
would continue. He said,
Any story will have a gradual decline as time goes by but the media is still devoted to covering it [the Maddie case.] We will do what we can to keep it out there and I will continue for as long as Kate and Gerry want me to. But let's hope it all ends tomorrow with a phone call.