One has no idea whether or not it is possible to 'manage' the news.
The actuality is that CM was employed as a spokesman for MM and her parents at a time when there was little or no support coming from any other source. They were on their own.
Snip
Portuguese police 'ignored Madeleine McCann leads'
Portuguese police have ignored hundreds of potential new leads in the Madeleine McCann case because of their belief that she is already dead, it has been claimed.
By Fiona Govan in Lisbon12 February 2010 • 7:30am
Details of possible sightings from across Europe have been forwarded to Portuguese investigators by local forces but no effort has been made to follow them up.
KandGMcC, both 41, learnt of the existence of the dossier of new information, including tips offs, license plate numbers and even photographs of children who could be their daughter, during a court hearing in Lisbon that ended Wednesday.
"They were shocked at what was in it and, even worse, what little had been done to follow any of it up,” said C M,
spokesman for the McC family.
"Kate and Gerry have consistently known that potential fresh information was not being properly followed up, if at all.”
The potential new leads date from July 2008 when the case was officially shelved by Portuguese police after they failed to find any evidence of the missing girl.
The confidential dossier contains hundreds of statements that could prove useful in solving the mystery of MM’s disappearance from an Algarve holiday apartment on May 3, 2007.
... ...
"Every piece of information (in the dossier of potential new leads) was treated the same way - RP (current Algarve police chief) writes on it 'this is not relevant to the investigation',”
Lawyer - Mrs D said from her office in the Portuguese capital on Thursday.
“He believed and to this day still believes that MM is dead. I asked him: ‘How can you find a person when you are not looking for them?’”.
She said some of the leads seemed credible, including a cluster of sightings by independent eye witnesses in northern Italy, and had been forwarded by police forces in the UK, Spain, France and Italy but ignored by their Portuguese counterparts.
Copies of the files would now be passed to the McCs to be followed up by private investigators hired to search for their daughter.
"But I am angry because it is the Portuguese investigative police who should be doing this job,” Mrs Duarte, added.
"They have the power and capability to do it. It is they who should be doing it not and not my clients."
That is a flavour of the times when CM was employed as a spokesman - not a fixer - for a family giving their all to find their daughter.
Who knows what information was lost by a force which was not looking and had not really been doing so since very shortly after MM disappeared; and the lead detectives of the PJ who didn't go back to finish whatever business they had with CB when they didn't get him in first time round.