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Madeleine McCann‘s father has accused a section of the UK media of Making his family “monsters” In calling for greater scrutiny of the press.
gerry mccann told bbc radio 4‘S Today The program states that the media “repeatedly interfered” with the investigation into his daughter’s disappearance in 2007, which he believes hindered the search for her.
Mr McCann said in the rare interview that more than a year after Labor came to power, “press regulation is no longer a priority” and that he was “extremely disappointed” with the government for not implementing some of the recommendations made in the first part of the Leveson inquiry, which he committed to before the election.
After her three-year-old daughter disappeared during a family holiday in Portugal and was never found, she said her family had “reporters coming to the house, photographers literally swinging their cameras at our car window, while behind us were two-year-old twins who were scared”.
He told the BBC, “We’re lucky we survived. We had tremendous support – but I can promise you, there were times I felt I was drowning. And that was mainly the media.”
“It was just what was happening and the way things were being portrayed, where you were being suffocated and buried, and feeling like there was no way out.”
He has called for the second phase of God leveson To resume investigations into interrogations, illegal actions by the media and journalists’ relations with politicians and police. The second phase was canceled by the Tories in 2018 as they claimed “the world has changed” since the Leveson report of 2012.
The McCann family are among more than 30 people who have signed a letter to the Prime Minister calling for the second phase of the Leveson inquiry to be reopened, along with the mother of television presenter Caroline Flack and the families of the Hillsborough victims.
Mr McCann expressed disappointment that the Labor government had not kept to its commitment to implement some of Leveson’s recommendations after a year in power.
“We have been in government for more than a year and there has been no change,” he said. “It is no longer acceptable to me, over a year on, that Leveson and press regulation are no longer a priority.”
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the second phase of the investigation had been “dismissed” and that the media landscape was now very different. he told bbc breakfast: “It’s a really difficult thing to get right, because we have to balance the rights and needs of victims and survivors with the need for a free press.
“But I believe action is needed in this area, and I would be really pleased to meet Mr McCann to discuss this.”