Unofficial Sources.

Blood on the walls,intercepted emails,phone taps,searches,suicides.sightings and denials.

All have appeared in the press over the last few days in relation to the Maddy case.Interest understandably dropped earlier in the summer but as the 100 day anniversary approaches,a number of incidents have provoked new interest.

A lot of this appears to have come from so called "unofficial sources" from within the Portuguese police.The question of whether the media should have used these sources is debatable.

However it appears that the Portuguese authorities wish to put out the message that the investigation is moving on.The direction it is taking seems to be that this is not an abduction but a murder that may have happened within the apartment.

The press,I don't believe,can be blamed for this reporting.The damage that it must be doing to the McCanns,however,is regrettable.

Deborah Orr has a good piece in this morning's Indy,which also dedicated its front page to the affair headlining "Truth, lies and the smearing of the McCanns"

Deborah says that

the journalistic emphasis has been on sensation and emotionally-driven speculation, rather than sober reporting and investigation. It has taken a long time for the sketchy details of this particular shocker to have been uncovered, and there is a lot more to do before the story really begins to stand up. This says a great deal about the state of journalism in Britain today, and all over Europe. None of it is terribly edifying.