Your last sentence encapsulates the case, but I'm not sure it's as simple as you state. In the first week they were either economical with the truth (what they say is the truth that is) even with their own family, or their family were also consciously managing the release of information right from the start - whichever is the case the news about the patio door being unlocked was not reported immediately.
It's the most obvious early indication that reputation management was immediately high on the agenda (there's also the "jemmied shutters" issue, but that's not so clear cut), within hours and it does suggest it may also have been a factor in what they told the police and in production of the timelines.
So I don't think they were selfless at all, though there could be more than one reason for that - it's not necessarily indicative of knowledge of what happened to Madeleine. It is perhaps indicative that the urgency they expressed in the earliest media statements was not their only consideration however.
Is it possible that there does not have to be a contradiction between 'reputation management', as you say, and doing the best in finding their daughter?
Wouldn't the McCanns have been correct to be hyper-conscious from the start of the fact that the eyes of the world were upon them, and fear that any suspicion of their guilt would detract from the focus of an investigation being to search for an abducted child? Could we understand and forgive certain discrepancies in this context, or even place those discrepancies in the same category as acting in the best interest of their child?
Now icabod and many others are going to cite the case of the e-fits. That saga could be considered taking reputation management too far. Yes.
Could that have been a mistake plain and simple, however? An over-reaction to the fear of Gerry McCann being placed under too much scrutiny?
The McCanns' repeated insistence of being innocent in the matter of dining away from the apartment, for example - ill advised, in my humble opinion - demonstrates their thinking that showing they got things right is the way to maintain support for searching for their child. If they were seen to be doing anything wrong, that would detract from any focus on finding their daughter and could also lead to suspicion falling directly on the parents.
These two things - maintaining their innocence, possibly to the point of glossing over certain facts; and steering people in the direction of looking for their daughter - appear to be very closely linked in the McCann mind.
Assuming innocence of a major crime as a premise, could we forgive a lot of these things and consider them not to be selfish, but , in the mind of the McCanns at least ( if not in everyone else's) , entirely in keeping with the goal of finding Madeleine?
