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Madeleine McCann’s father has called for greater scrutiny of the UK media as he told how “monstering” by sections of the press had made him feel as if he was being “suffocated and buried”.
Gerry McCann said his family was tormented by press “abuses” and that the media had “repeatedly interfered” with the investigation into his daughter’s disappearance in 2007.
He said the intrusion took a “huge toll” on his family. “We had sustained interest and misleading headlines for 15 months or more that forced us to take legal action to stop it,” he told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We are lucky. We survived. We had tremendous support. But I can promise you, there were times where I felt like I was drowning, and it was the media, primarily, not the situation we were in, being declared arguido [suspect].
“We knew the legal process. It was what was happening and the way things were being portrayed, where you were being suffocated and buried, and it felt like there wasn’t a way out.”
McCann and his wife, Kate, are among more than 30 people who have signed a letter to Keir Starmer calling on him to revive the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which was due to examine the relationship between the media and the police.
McCann said it was not acceptable that more than a year on from Labour coming into power, press regulation was “no longer a priority”. He said his family had been subjected to “monstering” by sections of the media and that the press was “camped” outside his home in Rothley, Leicestershire, for months after Madeleine disappeared.
Describing the intrusion, he said: “Journalists coming to the house, photographers literally ramming their cameras against our car window, when we had two-year-old twins in the back who were terrified, and how distressing that is for you as a parent … It’s the half-truths. It’s the making up of stories to fit the agenda, rather than the truth, which destroys people’s lives.”
He said the conduct showed why there needed to be tougher press regulation. “We’d be getting ready for bed, we’d put on the news at night, and there’d be front-page headlines about ourselves and what supposedly happened,” he said.
“That almost pulls you under, and you can see how people succumb to it and think they can’t get out of it. It’s so damaging, and we need that protection. There has to be redress. And at the minute, for most of these mainstream media, there is no redress. They don’t investigate, they don’t uphold complaints.”
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said a second phase of the inquiry had been ruled out and the media landscape was now very different. “We were very clear before the election that we weren’t going to commence the second part of the Leveson inquiry,” she told the Today programme.
“We share the view of the previous government that the situation has changed profoundly since the second part of Leveson was recommended: people now are more likely to get their news online from a whole variety of sources, which has thrown up new and different challenges.”
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She added on BBC Breakfast: “It’s a really difficult thing to get right, because we’ve got to balance the rights and needs of victims and survivors with the need for a free press. But I do recognise that action is needed in this area, and I’d be really happy to meet Mr McCann to discuss it.”
Madeleine disappeared from the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007 aged three. Gerry McCann said it was “absolutely dismaying” how the press had repeatedly interfered with the investigation.
“Published material which should have been confidential, should be passed on to the police, witness statements, many other things that have gone out. So if you were the perpetrator, you knew a lot more than you should have done.”
He said the hope he would find his daughter was “slim but it’s not extinguished”. “I’d love to find her alive, but we need to find out what happened and bring whoever’s responsible to justice, and other children and people are at risk while that perpetrator is free,” he said.
