Deborah Orr: Wonderful news that carries a message for the media

It isn't often that the papers have some really wonderful news to report. But it really is wonderful that Shannon Matthews has been found alive. This amazing news also carries a lesson for the media, about the way it turns horrible crimes into great stories, and what an unpleasant, self-regarding business this can be.

There were suggestions that Shannon's disappearance was not getting the coverage afforded to another lost child, Madeleine McCann, because the latter was a middle-class child and the former a child from a more modest and chaotic background. There is some truth in this argument, of course. But the underlying assumption is that all the publicity around the McCann case is something desirable and useful, while the more meagre reporting about the Matthew case is undesirable and useless. If children really could be reunited with their parents because of the magical power of speculative column inches, though, then Madeleine, not Shannon, would have been returned to her family by now. The very idea that the hypocritical furore around Madeleine is something to be aspired to, a benchmark of any positive kind, is quite wrong and ought to be challenged.

True, the "debate" helped to keep Shannon's abduction in the public domain, just as the "debate" around Made-leine continues to keep her case in the public domain. It might be argued that there would have been no great endeavour to find Shannon had the press not made the supposedly modest fuss it did. I believe this isn't the case. The local media has a vast part to play, but the national and international press, apart from reporting facts about the investigation, can offer little but intrusive "colour".

The reality is that the vast majority of the "stories" written about the McCann case have been prurient and sensational pieces of cynical propaganda, serving no practical purpose at all except for the selling of newspapers. In comparison to the pain of their loss, the slurs that have been repeated about the McCanns were probably a drop in an ocean of regret and grief. Their enthusiastic distribution has still demeaned the pubic discourse. It is quite unbelievable that this process is being advertised as something that should be reproduced.

For Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, and her partner, Craig Meehan, the crass process whereby those suffering most are placed at the centre of the story, in the absence of real developments, was well under way. The supposedly moral pressure asking for Shannon's case to receive more coverage had started to work. Karen was being subjected to a public grilling about many aspects of her personal life, and judged. This could not have been helpful.

Meanwhile, the media has got its story, the public appetite for information has been whetted, and the door is open for Shannon's family and friends to be exploited further. Shannon is nine, has been away from home for three weeks and no one knows how long it will take her to recover from her ordeal. Privacy is what she needs now, and protection. The media has no place at all in providing that.