No, Gordon, it is not just a rumor, but a report that goes back to the first week Maddie went missing. And I'm actually glad you asked me this, because I didn't want to answer your question without some research, and I saved every link to what I found so that no one will ever think it is "just a rumor" again.
First of all, it is true that many months after the disappearance, Sky News reporter Ian Woods denied that the McCanns called them directly on the night of the disappearance.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/ian-woods-mccanns-did-not-call-sky-news-first/68346603
But what Ian Woods does say is that a "friend" of the McCanns called
GMTV to set up an interview for the next morning by 8 a.m. That "friend" was Jill Renwick, and what she said to GMTV is in this article:
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id31.html
Notice that even though the search for Maddie had barely begun, the McCanns were already feeling "let down" by the police, as if it was the fault of the police that their daughter was missing. So they had Jill Renwick ranting to both GMTV and the BBC by 7:45 the next morning that the police weren't doing enough. I find that odd in the extreme.
So supposedly, according to Ian Woods, those interviews by Renwick were the "first time" that Sky News heard about Maddie. However they apparently didn't check Google News . . .
A blogger named "Joana Morais" noticed that a newspaper article appeared overnight in the British Press -
the Telegraph - talking about Madeleine. Who called them with specific information? No one knows for sure, but the Telegraph story was supposedly in the paper by
12 a.m., just two hours after Maddie disappeared.
Blog
Check the time and date:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/m...QYIV0?xml=/global/2007/05/04/nportugal104.xml
So that report comes from the Foreign Office just two hours after Maddie went missing - that's not alot of time for a report to get out.
The blogger made the point of noticing that Portugal and Britain are in the same time zone, and I think that's significant.
Okay - another point:
We have three different articles from that first week that mention John Corner, the godfather of the Twins. Kate called him immediately on the night Maddie went missing, and he has been highly involved in everything. He owns a Media company. He is quoted in three early articles saying that he talked to Kate immediately after Madeleine disappeared:
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id31.html
River Media Company
Products and Services
TV and Film - Production and Post Production
Now - he may not be a famous newsman, and he may not be a journalist, but he is a Media Specialist who deals with "TV and Film," and he is probably the person who alerted some of the media. So we don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to think that Kate might have known good and well that this man might give their story to the media right away.
John Corner also shot a video diary of the McCanns for a Panorama Special about the "predator" who stole Maddie:
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk...ited-and-then-took-his-chance-64375-20125768/
He is not an objective journalist at all, but someone involved with the spin due to his connection with the family from the very first night.
The McCanns seemed to be on the phone all night long to many, many people. None of us here can know for sure that they didn't call some media. We know they called a Corner. We know that Jill Renwick had an interview by the next morning. So what is the difference? The story was out really fast, and Kate was already spinning it her own way, with broken shutters and abductors and police who weren't doing anything. And that's why I don't trust what she said that night.