This recent idea - apparently spawned in the Telegraph - that the “disappearance” of Shannon Matthews was a scam based on an episode of Shameless has the feel of a stupid newsroom joke that’s got out of hand.
What actually happened in the episode in question was that Frank Gallagher, the series’ drunken, drug-addled patriarch, claimed [...]

Just in case you were struggling to imagine what a child hidden in a drawer under a bed looks like, the Daily Mail is pleased to help out.

Next week in the Mail: a delightful cutaway diagram showing how asylum seekers prepare swans for the oven. Mmm. Swans. [Dribble.]

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Sunday Mirror columnist Carole Malone talking about Shannon Matthews, on the One Show tonight:
The media reflects the public mood, and the public just haven’t taken to Shannon’s family as they did to Kate and Gerry McCann.
Yes, it’s the fault of the public - the scum who read newspapers rather than the nice people who write [...]

I was thinking the other day about precisely the issue Roy Greenslade discusses on his blog today. Namely, why is it that three weeks after the disappearance of Shannon Matthews, the case doesn’t have nearly the same profile as Madeleine McCann’s did?
Greenslade speculates that the “unsympathetic domestic profile” of Shannon’s mum, Karen, in contrast with the educated, middle class [...]