Samster said:
There's some crazy shit in the Portuguese press this morning - they report that tranquilizers and a syringe were found in the apartment
Now this is why I find the papers so fooking dangerous. 115+ days after the event some Portuguese tabloid that is already engaged in a sustained persecution campaign against the McCanns comes out with a headline like this. Then (taking care to attribute the allegation to the Portuguese tabloid Correio de Manha, probably to safeguard itself against future libellous litigation) the Express follows suit the next day.
Now I've had a good look around the Sky and BBC news websites, and those of a few other papers, and there is no mention of these sensationalist headlines by any of the responsible news organisations yet, if it were true, something like this would represent a significant breakthrough and therefore be quite newsworthy.... but there's nothing! - so I think it has to be treated with extreme caution and assumed to be untrue.
However, the disturbing fact is that a percentage of Express readers [and others] will eagerly consume this shite adding cumulative weight and momentum to the hate campaign. Consequently, an ever widening belief emerges that the McCanns are actually guilty of orchestrating Madeleines disappearance .... yet virtually all of the "evidence" feeding this belief originates from tabloids that have no real access to any of the facts.
I'm not just out to defend the McCanns for the sake of it, I am trying to looking beyond the headlines at what is actually known. The more I look at it the more I am inclined to believe the McCanns are on the receiving end of a very unfair deal, fuelled mainly by notoriously unreliable tabloid sensationalisms.
It may well turn out that the McCanns are implicit in this case, but I just can't go with this belief that because there's nothing to prove anything to the contrary then the McCanns must be guilty. I just think that is way too short sighted and premature.
In the light of so few known facts it's all very well for those that are so quick to be the judge, jury and executioner of the McCanns, but they should remember that in the event of false allegations being levelled against them, they would be the first to squeal "innocent until proved guilty"!!