She is the vision of grief: an overwhelmed mother sitting vulnerably in front of what seems to be a million flashing cameras. Her exhaustion is apparent with tired eyes and a pale complexion, which only emphasises the rugged styling of her short red hair. Although her exterior is the definition of innocence, as she begs for the return of her “princess”, Shannon Matthews, the inner workings of this seemingly fragile mother are nothing but evil. Karen Matthews is nothing but evil. She was perfect. Not as an individual but as right-wing media’s ‘poster woman’ for a supposed ‘broken Britain’, or what the majority knows as the working class. She was a mother willing to allow her 9-year-old daughter to suffer captivity at the hands of a socially introverted man so she could cash out £50,000 from donations to satisfy her smoking habits and settle her debts. It only shows how little society understands the working class, who, in 2021, represented an estimated 48% of the UK’s population. How unaware has society become when it no longer recognises what it means to belong to the working class - to understand the majority?

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Megan Aldridge, the childhood best friend of Shannon Matthews, believes class affected the coverage of the case. She said:

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“I am angry at the fact Dewsbury was said to be a deprived area [whilst] my best friend was missing. I didn’t feel like they [were] trying hard enough to find her. They have been focusing on finding Shannon rather than looking at Dewsbury as a deprived area. I hate the fact Karen was looked at as a villain before the truth came out. I still suffer because of [the case] to this day.”

 

Following the abduction 15 years ago, Shannon Matthews received a new identity and has no contact with her former life, including Megan.

 

“They took my best friend away from me, and I am never going to see her again, and it breaks my heart. I wish I could just see her and go give her the biggest hug and tell her how much I have missed her. [...] It had always been me and her against the world.”

 

An estimated 84% of journalists in 2021 were found to have been brought up in an upper-class privileged society. They do not know the struggles of financial struggles. When looking at the life of Karen Matthews, they saw supposed ‘social issues’, which, in reality, were not issues at all. Instead, they were just features of working-class life. The supposed issues were that she lived on a council estate and had multiple children with different fathers, despite having never been married. TV presenter Carole Malone believes she understands people like Karen Matthew because, although her £5 million net worth, she grew up near a council estate. She speaks in a caring and sympathetic tone:

 

“[They have never] had jobs, never wanted one, [they’re people] who [expect] the state to fund every illegitimate child they [have.]”

 

As you can see, Malone is quite the fan of Shameless and Little Britain - she watched both series and believed she could generalise 17% of the UK’s population to three classist characteristics. She is socially aware… supposedly.

 

Upper-class society seems to believe Karen had seven children for multiple reasons. One, because, as suggested by Malone, they were a form of financial income; or two, because as an ‘exclusive’ in the highly respected British newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’ suggested, she just loves sex! We live in 2023, where it is more common than unusual to see parents having multiple children with different partners; however, it only seems to be an issue in society when the parents belong to the lower class. For example, in 2017, the Daily Mail romanticised music legend Sir Rod Stewart’s role as a father with the headline “He is a doting dad to all eight of his children.” Yet, in contrast, while advocating for her daughter's return on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sarah Montague spoke of Karen’s domestic life as a

 

“slightly [complicated] family picture.”

 

She hesitates.

 

“You’ve got seven children by six fathers?”

 

This is not only a classist but also a sexist remark that came a day before Shannon Matthews was found. Montague clearly believed that the disappearance of a 9-year-old girl was not as appealing as a mother with multiple children. Society says there is no issue if you are rich and have numerous children; if anything, it is portrayed as a romanticised life. However, society also tells us that if the same situation applies to impoverished people, their fertility is motivated by financial desire.

 

In the news, we occasionally witness a fascination in one missing case whilst seeing others neglected from coverage. It has and will always happen. During the disappearance of Shannon Matthews, she did not receive the same public attention as 4-year-old Madeleine McCann, who was abducted on holiday in Portugal the previous year. Although we would like to believe that all children are equally valued, this was not the case regarding the two girls contrasting media coverage. It seemed that middle-class journalists found a greater ability to sympathise with middle-class McCann over Matthews because, as one Daily Mail commentator stated:

 

“This kind of thing doesn’t usually happen to people like us.”

 

Like us. Apparently, the working class are not real people.

By the second week of Shannon Matthews's disappearance, coverage of the case was reduced to primarily regional papers as larger ones seemingly lost interest. Roy Greenslade suggested that this was because Shannon did not hold a level of ‘sellability”. After all, in his words “, there are no ‘cute’ pictures of her.” Imagine grieving your missing child and being told by a newspaper’s representative that they will not cover your lost child’s case because they are not “photogenic” enough for publication. Between April 2020 and 2021, police dealt with more than 128,000 missing people in England, Scotland and Wales - is their lack of ‘sellability’ why we do not hear about them?

Coverage keeps a missing person's case relevant; lacking it could be life-threatening. The Crime and Investigation website called McCann “a pretty, photogenic child” and received more coverage for her disappearance than Matthews. Within nine days of both girls' abductions, McCann’s case was covered in 465 British articles, whilst Matthews only appeared in 242. These were two missing children under the age of 10. However, one was valued more because she was ‘cuter.’ It is beyond irritating. The pictures often provided to the press by the parents of missing upper-class children tend to be taken professionally and, therefore, to a greater quality. Contrastingly, in many working-class families, the only professional-quality photographs of the children are taken from their school pictures. They do not have the same access to advanced high-quality cameras to take ‘cute’ photos of their children - something which, as a result, can affect the media coverage of a working-class child’s disappearance.

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So, why was there so much emphasis on class in 2008? It is a combination of different factors, however, primarily a response to the recession. Labour and the Conservatives indirectly blamed the financial crisis on the welfare state by emphasising in their policies that the distribution of benefits needed to be reformed. However, the recession was due to rising unemployment and low economic growth. They unintentionally progressed an already existing class war by falsely implying that the welfare state was responsible for the country’s financial problems. It's ironic how even this country’s two main political parties see the welfare state as a scapegoat - I suppose that is just the default power dynamic of blaming the smaller man.

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On the 6th of April 2008, Karen confessed to collaboration in abducting her 9-year-old daughter. It cannot be denied that Karen betrayed her daughter. To some extent, it could also be suggested she betrayed the working class. Karen had an opportunity to change the social perspective of the working class; instead, she intensified the stigma by being precisely what society wanted her to be… a villain.

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Shannon Matthews disappeared 15 years ago, and yet, has anything changed since? We still see negative depictions of the working class and the welfare state in the media. The 2020 BBC’s Creative Diversity Report said:

 

“Often those from lower socio-economic backgrounds are depicted negatively, fuelled by stereotypes and seen as the object of ridicule.”

 

It shows how well-rooted classism is in our supposed ‘progressive’ world. The working class's everyday economic and social issues will seemingly forever appear in the news as a form of entertainment.

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Sociologist Stanley Cohen argued in 1972 that the press will always establish a villain (‘folk devils’) as a representative of a societal moral panic. Karen Matthews was the folk devil for right-wing media’s hysteria of a so-called ‘broken Britain.’ A social and metaphorical devil. Karen Matthews was never a realistic representation of the working class. In the words of Labour Back-bencher Katy Clark:

 

“Karen Matthews represented Karen Matthews.”

 

She represented an inhumane evil...

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And she played it well.