Daily Telegraph Report 4th May 2007 at 12.01am

There must be a thread for this around somewhere, but I'm sorry I can’t find it at the moment.(Admin please link if you can)


 
On the Hideho Facebook site they have had a thread running for a few days about the early Daily Telegraph story timed at 12.01am on 4^th May 2007.
 
Someone has now posted up a link to the ‘original’ Telegraph article and I notice that it has now been ‘whooshed’ and replaced with the article from the 5^th May 2007 dated at 6.10am, which clearly has too much detail to have been posted at 12.01am, so soon after the ‘abduction’ shout.
 
Surprisingly (????) no mention is made of this update, which is usually reflected immediately against the date and time at the top of the original article, which only raises more doubts as to the honesty of the Telegraph’s reporting and the reasons behind this alteration and false reporting/record keeping.
 
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For the record I post below the original very brief  story, timed at 12.01am:
 
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and also a link to Joana Morais blog on the matter which confirms the above brief report:
 
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It has generally been accepted that this time stamp must have been ‘wrong’ as the story could not have reached the Telegraph so quickly.
 
TB did a Freedom of Information request back in December 2007 and it was from their response that this general acceptance came about, although at that time (pre-release of PJ files) people were probably not quite so aware of the diversions, duplicity and contradictions in statements etc employed by TM.
 
Indeed TB seemed quite satisfied with the responses.
 
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MADELEINE MCCANN - ANSWERS FROM THE FOREIGN OFFICE
 
Answers supplied by the Foreign Office to the Madeleine Foundation, 1 February 2008 (Summary)
 
Foreign Office reference: FOI 0010-08 (CONS 03/2008)
 
QUOTE - verbatim but with parts snipped:
 
The online [‘Daily Telegraph’] report appears to have been posted 3 minutes after we were notified that a child had gone missing. If this timing is correct, then it is impossible that a Foreign Office spokesman could have spoken to the paper. The timing may be an error. In this case, the duty officer would have spoken to the ‘Daily Telegraph’; however we cannot give any further information due to the uncertainty over the timing.
 
At 23:58 on 3 May 2007 our duty officer in Portimao received a call from a Mark Warner employee reporting that a child had gone missing from the Ocean Bay Club, Praia da Luz. Out duty officer in Lisbon informed the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Response Centre in London at 00:30 on 4 May 2007.
 
We offer consular assistance, depending on the individual circumstances of each case, to British nationals in distress overseas. In this case, consular officials provided the appropriate assistance when the disappearance was first reported. The details about the disappearance given in the ‘Daily Telegraph’ article, namely that the girl’s parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep that night, but returned to check on them only to find that the girl had gone missing’, were given to our Duty Officer in Portimao when the disappearance was reported.
 
 
I have never accepted that the 12.01am time could be wrong, as with postings such as this the date and time are generally captured and not input, except in the case of the 12.01 time, where it is usually an earlier posting the previous day, but with a time delay in order that it falls within a certain reporting date.
 
The FoI response implies that this could not have been the case, although it is carefully worded to not actually state very much at all.
 
I also cannot believe that any documented procedure for such an event for the Foreign/Consular Office, which must exist in FO protocols, would be to contact just The Telegraph and not put it out through an agency or as a round-robin to all the papers.
 
The dishonesty of the Telegraph’s historical reporting and the ‘whooshing’ of articles just brings these doubts back to the fore.

I think your post confirms what many people have theorised over the years - MSM was teed up ready to go on 3 May. Seems like the Telegraph jumped the gun though & shows how difficult it is to control so many actors within the play. Would only take an ambitious youngster, keen to break the big story first and unaware of the big picture and therefore what their haste might reveal.

I actually remember this being discussed on the Mirror forum (I go back that far).

It is very odd and looks like the Foreign Office were involved immediately!!

Post from Astro on:
 
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says Telegraph article was changed on January 13, 2008
 
This is truly remarkable!
 
TB’s Freedom of Information request was dated 21^st December 2007 and Foreign Office response dated 1^st February 2008.
 
Pure coincidence of course!

Doug D wrote:Post from Astro on:
 
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says Telegraph article was changed on January 13, 2008
 
This is truly remarkable!
 
TB’s Freedom of Information request was dated 21^st December 2007 and Foreign Office response dated 1^st February 2008.
 
Pure coincidence of course!

So, less than 14 hours after the so-called abduction, it was being reported in the Telegraph that there is NO evidence that it was an abduction. 

This case is so huge, I am in agreement with Richard D Hall, and that is, if the truth comes out the country "will fall".

Hi to all posters, in one of the videos taken,John Hill(Ocean club Manager) States" the shutters were half open and window open" this must have been the exit route of the Abductor!?
Also in one of the videos,GMc, KM, RO,JT a man wearing a Brown velvet type coat and blue jeans,DP? takes a long couple of looks towards the photographer filming them?
There certainly seem to be rather a lot of "persons from MI 5/6" involved in this case,Why?

BlueBag wrote:I actually remember this being discussed on the Mirror forum (I go back that far).

It is very odd and looks like the Foreign Office were involved immediately!!

That actually is quite normal. The US foreign service does recommend in case of a serious event to make a contact with the local citizen's service ASAP so they can provide help (like translating) and give info about procedures. I know Mexican and Dutch foreign service advice the same.  No doubt there were instructions for that in the MW/OC office. Never heard of a foreign service voluntarily contacting the press though.

Doug D wrote:Post from Astro on:
 
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says Telegraph article was changed on January 13, 2008
 
This is truly remarkable!
 
TB’s Freedom of Information request was dated 21^st December 2007 and Foreign Office response dated 1^st February 2008.
 
Pure coincidence of course!

Angela Morado didn't phone Gerry untill  00.29, good half hour later. By that time the PJ had arrived.

Gerry made and received 14 calls between midnight and 02.00, so he can't have spent much time with the PJ who arrived around midnight. 
 

I don't know the date of the FO directive which instructions that the McCs should always be accompanied by FO staff when dealing with the police but that must have been early too.

lj wrote:

BlueBag wrote:I actually remember this being discussed on the Mirror forum (I go back that far).

It is very odd and looks like the Foreign Office were involved immediately!!

That actually is quite normal. The US foreign service does recommend in case of a serious event to make a contact with the local citizen's service ASAP so they can provide help (like translating) and give info about procedures. I know Mexican and Dutch foreign service advice the same.  No doubt there were instructions for that in the MW/OC office. Never heard of a foreign service voluntarily contacting the press though.

Maybe I should have said the Foreign Office were involved instantly.

This article was published 12.01 and someone had to receive the report from channels in Portugal and put it on the website. 

They were really keen.

"A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing."



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BlueBag wrote:I actually remember this being discussed on the Mirror forum (I go back that far).

Me too, BlueBag! Been discussing this case since day 1!
Be darned if I can remember what my name was on MF though!

Unless I have the wrong end of the stick here.

Joana Morais took a screen dump of it and kept the picture.  I also believe somebody looked into the page source on the web-site and it showed the article was up-loaded a few minutes before one minute past midnight.

That's how I understand/remember it.

The wayback machine has a snapshot from 2008/04/30 (its earliest) which has the timestamp as 12:37am 2007/05/07, but then the time reverts to 12:01 2007/05/04 on the next snapshot (2011).

The two times come from different mechanisms, so I wonder if it's a simple as a change in formatting, that picks up information from different places, as the 12:37 comes from a lastUpdated field, but the 12:01 from a publishedDate field (my guess).

12:37
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12:01
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This is rather good:

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Other factor might be that the person alerting in UK thought  there was an hour's difference? 
So they thought it was by then an hour later in Portugal. 

I also came across one statement in which a GNR officer puts the time of phoning the press at well before midnight. 
Rachel M warbles on in her rogatory about a phoning friend and contacts he has with BBC but puts all this well after midnight.

Even the information in the longer article is weird. jill Renwick - had this woman ever seen Maddie? 'very pretty, very blond'  missed out the bit about lighting  up any room she entered.

It sounds as if she was describing Amelie, not Madeleine.

cbeagle:
 
Wayback machine is clearly not accurate.
 
The 12.37 one shows a date of 7^th May and is the article that was originally published on 5^th May 2007 @ 6.10am.
 
The 12.01 article shows a date of 4^th May and is again this article which has been swopped for the original, which has just been ‘whooshed’ with no update time visible. There is far too much detail, plus interviews with neighbours etc in the article which cannot therefore have been available at the time, which presumably is what the Telegraph wants in order to make a mockery of the time.
 
The original 12.01am article on 4^th May 2007, less than 2 hours after the alleged ‘abduction’ had the right amount of detail for a first report:
 
Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal
 
By staff and agencies
 
12:01AM BST 04 May 2007 Comments
 
A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.
 
Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.
 
A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.
 
"They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.
 
Tigger:
 
The ‘abovetopsecret.com’ article is interesting and tries to timeline the conundrum.
 
However I don’t believe the actual:
 
12:01 AM 04 May 07: Story is uploaded.
 
to be correct as the 12.01 time is what comes up when articles are posted sometime in advance, but which they wish to datestamp with that days date, so it could have been uploaded anytime in the hour or so before 12.01, although would not have been visible to outsiders before that time.

If a Mark Warner employee phoned the Consulate they didn't use the Ocean club landline. There was a call just before midnight, but not to the Consulate unless they have changed their number since. Ocean Club landline calls can be seen here;

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Sandy and Patricia Cameron made a call to someone however;


Sandy Cameron statement: "On the night of Thursday, May 3, 2007, Patricia received a telephone call from Gerry informing us of the disappearance of Madeleine. Gerry manifested all those emotions one expects from a father who has lost a child in the circumstances. He was distraught and spoke at the same time he cried. He seemed frustrated with the slowness of the searches in Portugal, with the fact that the borders had not been closed, and with the fact that sniffer dogs were not being used. Patricia and I contacted the British Embassy to try and help in this regard."


Trish called Gerry;


0.27.07 am Trish Cameron calls Gerry (2.28 minutes)


Angela Morado called Gerry;

0.29.37 am Angela Morado at UK Consulate calls Gerry (4.53 minutes)
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Last week, on October 17th, Angie Morado, proconsul at the British Vice Consulate in Portimão, celebrated 25 years in the service of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Portugal. 

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sallypelt wrote:

Doug D wrote:Post from Astro on:
 
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says Telegraph article was changed on January 13, 2008
 
This is truly remarkable!
 
TB’s Freedom of Information request was dated 21^st December 2007 and Foreign Office response dated 1^st February 2008.
 
Pure coincidence of course!

So, less than 14 hours after the so-called abduction, it was being reported in the Telegraph that there is NO evidence that it was an abduction. 

This case is so huge, I am in agreement with Richard D Hall, and that is, if the truth comes out the country "will fall".

Oh I do hope to see this in my lifetime because something drastic needs to happen to shake those from the top of the tree.

What is so big that the country 'could fall'?

Seriously....what?


Royal in sex scandal?   No
Queen is found to be an imposter? OK - still the country would not fall.
Prime Minister caught with pants down?  No

We got through a couple of World Wars etc ... please someone tell me what could be so big that it would cause the country to fall?
I'm sorry but it is ridiculous.

There are probably a couple of VIP establishment figures caught with their pants down in this case and they will go to any length to suppress it - but that's about all.

Yahoo news also reported a child missing in Portugal around the same time as the Telegraph article. Did Wayback crawl the Yahoo Homepage on this date by any chance?

Harriet94 wrote:Yahoo news also reported a child missing in Portugal around the same time as the Telegraph article. Did Wayback crawl the Yahoo Homepage on this date by any chance?

Pay no attention, no offence but this is like Wayback revisited.  If you search the Telegraph archives for the same period you will find that the majority of articles are timed at 12:01 or 12:05 - it would appear to be some kind of archive default setting.  Unless of course someone can produce a screen shot of the original press report showing the date and time it was released then I might be persuaded otherwise but somehow I doubt if that's likely.

There is enough to chew on without trying to make something out of nothing don't you agree?

What on earth is an "archive default setting"?!!

Verdi wrote:

Harriet94 wrote:Yahoo news also reported a child missing in Portugal around the same time as the Telegraph article. Did Wayback crawl the Yahoo Homepage on this date by any chance?

Pay no attention, no offence but this is like Wayback revisited.  If you search the Telegraph archives for the same period you will find that the majority of articles are timed at 12:01 or 12:05 - it would appear to be some kind of archive default setting.  Unless of course someone can produce a screen shot of the original press report showing the date and time it was released then I might be persuaded otherwise but somehow I doubt if that's likely.

There is enough to chew on without trying to make something out of nothing don't you agree?

Verdi is 100% right about this.

I investigated this a long time ago and for some reason it was indeed common for articles such as this, not only on the Telegraph but for other newspapers, to be archived, by default, to 12.01am on the date of publication of the article.

I'm satisfied that the article was published some time on 4 May but emphatically NOT at 12.01am.

Mind you, the swiftness and thoroughness of the Foreign Office is remarkable even if it took place later in the morning than 12.01, and there is evidence of much preparation behind the scenes during the night of 3/4 May.  One recalls for example Olive Press editor Jon Clarke being summoned in the early hours of the morning by the Sun and making the 5-hour journey to Praia da Luz by car in time to be there before midday. A good and faithful Murdoch 'gofer', he has been rewarded for asserting that the McCanns are '100% innocent' by being asked to report on and even create stories like the ridiculous Marcelinho Italiano story (Angolan bouncer and basketball-player who claimed a violent paedophile gang had taken Madeleine to the U.S.).

Who ordered Jon Clarke out of bed at dawn, or before, to get over to Praia da Luz - when Madeleine could have been found alive before Clarke ever got to Praia da Luz.

Did someone very senior at the Sun just know that this was going to be the story of the decade?

Who owns Yahoo? Is it USA based or under the control of Bt?"

Nina wrote:Just an aside. Us, mere plebs, have to book flights be there 2 hours before the flight, and even if we live within spitting distance to the airport, it takes hours more than the 2 or 3 hour flight. So were the likes of reporters, cameramen, consulates and folk connected in some small way to HM government exempt from these hours?

You mean like Gerry McCann and his minders, when they didn't have to lower themselves to go through Passport Control and Customs when they travelled to England?

Hi Tony, how are you so sure that the telegraph article was not published @ 12.01?

Tony Bennett wrote:

Verdi wrote:

Harriet94 wrote:Yahoo news also reported a child missing in Portugal around the same time as the Telegraph article. Did Wayback crawl the Yahoo Homepage on this date by any chance?

Pay no attention, no offence but this is like Wayback revisited.  If you search the Telegraph archives for the same period you will find that the majority of articles are timed at 12:01 or 12:05 - it would appear to be some kind of archive default setting.  Unless of course someone can produce a screen shot of the original press report showing the date and time it was released then I might be persuaded otherwise but somehow I doubt if that's likely.

There is enough to chew on without trying to make something out of nothing don't you agree?

Verdi is 100% right about this.

I investigated this a long time ago and for some reason it was indeed common for articles such as this, not only on the Telegraph but for other newspapers, to be archived, by default, to 12.01am on the date of publication of the article.

I'm satisfied that the article was published some time on 4 May but emphatically NOT at 12.01am.

Mind you, the swiftness and thoroughness of the Foreign Office is remarkable even if it took place later in the morning than 12.01, and there is evidence of much preparation behind the scenes during the night of 3/4 May.  One recalls for example Olive Press editor Jon Clarke being summoned in the early hours of the morning by the Sun and making the 5-hour journey to Praia da Luz by car in time to be there before midday. A good and faithful Murdoch 'gofer', he has been rewarded for asserting that the McCanns are '100% innocent' by being asked to report on and even create stories like the ridiculous Marcelinho Italiano story (Angolan bouncer and basketball-player who claimed a violent paedophile gang had taken Madeleine to the U.S.).

Who ordered Jon Clarke out of bed at dawn, or before, to get over to Praia da Luz - when Madeleine could have been found alive before Clarke ever got to Praia da Luz.

Did someone very senior at the Sun just know that this was going to be the story of the decade?

I thank you!

The Foreign Office is another matter entirely - the rapid response to a non-story (at that stage) resulting in the British Ambassador winging his way down to PdL at a moments notice was totally off-piste and does not fall within the norm of ambassadorial remit.  That's to say nothing of all the other miscellaneous UK bodies that descended before the Portuguese authorities had a chance to even evaluate the situation.

As I said previously, Murdoch is never very far away from this saga - a very powerful individual I think.

Verdi:
 
‘If you search the Telegraph archives for the same period you will find that the majority of articles are timed at 12:01 or 12:05 - it would appear to be some kind of archive default setting.’
 
TB:
 
‘I investigated this a long time ago and for some reason it was indeed common for articles such as this, not only on the Telegraph but for other newspapers, to be archived, by default, to 12.01am on the date of publication of the article.
 
I'm satisfied that the article was published some time on 4 May but emphatically NOT at 12.01am.’
 
……………………………..
 
From just a few random pulls on the Daily Telegraph archive page, I am not convinced this is the case. News stories get dates and times when published:
 
Blair set for ambassador role in Africa
 
By Andrew Pierce
10:00PM BST 04 May 2007
 
World agrees it can afford to tackle climate change
 
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
4:30PM BST 04 May 2007
 
Anti-whaling advert 'boycotted' by MTV
 
By Andrew Pierce
4:01PM BST 04 May 2007
 
whereas ‘feature’ articles or stories fed in advance seem to pull the 12.01 ‘release’ time.
 
Why the elderly are easier to con
 
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
12:01AM BST 04 May 2007
 
 
I believe you investigated this at an early stage Tony, when you submitted your FoI request, before the full deviousness of TM became apparent.
 
Did you investigate this further at a later date?
 
It is also of concern that the original very brief archived article has been ‘whooshed’ and replaced with the morning article from 5^th May when they had been to visit the neighbours etc for comment.
 
When is an archive (or a WBM capture) not an archive? Whenever it relates to the Mc’s so it seems.