Newspapers ‘scapegoats’ over Madeleine

THE owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star said his newspapers were “scapegoated” for their coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

Richard Desmond told the Leveson Inquiry that his titles were “the only honest ones and straightforward ones” for the way they printed a front-page apology to the missing girl’s parents and paid them £550,000 (€657,484) in a libel settlement.

He hit out at a former head of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for criticising Daily Express editor Peter Hill over the paper’s reporting of the case in more than 100 articles.

“Every paper was doing the same thing, which is why every paper or most papers paid money to the McCanns.

“Only we were scapegoated by the ex-chairman of the PCC,” he said.

Desmond, who bought Express Newspapers in 2000, apologised to Kate and Gerry McCann, adding: “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to find Madeleine.”

But he told the inquiry into press standards that other newspapers also printed negative stories about the couple.

“We stood up and said ‘Yes, we got it wrong, there’s the money for the marketing fund, let’s try and find McCann, the poor little girl, let’s put it on the front page and apologise properly’.”

He added: “Yet the ex-chairman (of the PCC) and his cronies thought ‘We’ll hang out Peter Hill and the Daily Express’.

Desmond suggested the McCanns were content with his papers’ extensive coverage of Madeleine’s disappearance because it helped the search for the little girl.

“They were quite happy, as I understand, in articles being run about their poor daughter, because it kept it on the front page,” he said.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, described this as a “grotesque” characterisation, adding: “Your paper was accusing the McCanns on occasion of having killed their daughter.

“Are you seriously saying that they were sitting there quite happy, rather than entirely anguished by your paper’s bad behaviour?”

Desmond replied: “I do apologise to the McCanns. I am very sorry for the thing and I am very sorry that we got it wrong.”

Hill told the inquiry the Daily Express ran stories suggesting the McCanns could be responsible for Madeleine’s death because at the time “there was reason to believe” they might be true.

Asked about the decision to withdraw his titles from the PCC in January last year, Desmond said the body was “a useless organisation” run by “people that hated our guts, that wanted us out of business”.