Whisper it softly, but am I beginning to detect a backlash against the media coverage of Madeleine McCann's abduction? I first heard it from a friend. She had been sent a petition about Madeleine and asked to add her signature.

"How many hundreds of children have gone missing since Madeleine was abducted?" she asked me. "They don't rate a line of coverage. Meanwhile, politicians are wearing ribbons and football teams are emblazoned with pictures of this one missing child. Why the imbalance? Is it because her parents are good- looking, white and middle class?"

I was taken aback. I was also reminded that something similar happened in the wake of Diana's death. The country divided then between those who were carried away on a communal outpouring of grief for a woman they had never met and those who stood to one side, aghast.

At the weekend I heard a letter from a Radio Four listener. It asked why the abducted child was mentioned in every news bulletin when there was no news about her. Why, the writer asked, had Huw Edwards been dispatched to Portugal only to be seen standing outside a suspect's house interviewing another BBC reporter? Yesterday, a Daily Mail columnist queried what the media coverage would have been if the McCann family had been from a sink estate. Would they be receiving the same support, or would we be throwing up our collective hands in horror because they had gone out to dine on the night Madeleine was taken?

There is a truth in what they say. It is undeniable that, like Sarah Payne and like Holly and Jessica, Madeleine's pretty face and wholesome family are attracting more coverage than a plainer, less attractive victim would. It is also probable that beauty played its part in attracting their assailants. Nor should their visual appeal disqualify them from this coverage. Others may receive too little publicity. It doesn't mean the McCanns are receiving too much.

Madeleine's story is exactly where it should be, for the manner of her abduction is singular and the failure to find any trace of her is revelatory. If all of this coverage, focus and attention from the powerful obtain no result, what chance of rescue does an obscure child have? What want of rigour and systematic searching has Madeleine's disappearance exposed?

It is a hard fact that hundreds of children across the world have disappeared in the time that this four-year-old has been missing. It is also a hard fact that humans are not wired to feel deep empathy for each and every one. Show us the child's face, tell us their story and, yes, we will ache for them and theirs - but a number remains a number, however shocking its size. Statistics do not spur people into action, emotion does. One well-told story can be a catalyst for change in the lives of thousands.

Take famine as an example. For some African countries it is cyclical. I can remember seeing a cartoon of a couple sitting side by side on a sofa watching television. There was a "famine" headline on screen and the husband was saying to the wife: "It's a repeat." It was a concise illustration of compassion fatigue. Then Michael Buerk went to Ethiopia and uttered the words: "Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century." As he spoke, the camera panned over the starving, shivering, hopeless, huddled humanity in the refugee camp he was visiting. His broadcast made us understand anew what famine meant, and we moved en masse to assist. Out of that, like the ripples in a pond, came Live Aid and Band Aid and the G8 focus on Africa and initiatives such as the Gates and Clinton foundations. The efforts are not perfect, and the problems are far from solved. But the many who have received direct aid, whose lives have been saved or improved, have cause for gratitude.

Madeleine's story can be just such a force for good. Her parents' relentless and clever campaign will, we all hope, result in her discovery and her safe return home. But the coverage of her disappearance will have a much wider effect, for she has become everyone's child. The horror, rage, impotence and sympathy engendered by her and her family's suffering will put such a focus on the curse of child abduction that we will, I hope, finally go to war against it.

It is still possible that Madeleine has been snatched by a deranged couple who desperately want a child of their own and saw the McCanns as having one each and one to spare. But the possibility of paedophile involvement is the one that keeps us fixated as this heart-breaking saga unfolds.

The snatching of Madeleine from her bed has awakened a primeval dread in us. It taps into an ancient fear that is expressed in myth and nursery rhyme. As children, we cowered under the blankets for fear of the bogeyman who would climb through the window to get us. We listened to the story of the Pied Piper who stole away all the children of a village and led them into a mountain cave whose mouth closed behind them. We heard songs of fairies that took babies from their cradles and left changelings in their place. Madeleine's parents need her back, but it's not an exaggeration to say that we all need her back before our peace of mind is restored.

Our second-hand involvement in her abduction will make us demand more and better from all police services. It will also change our behaviour. The family friend who may have walked past the kidnapper as he carried Madeleine away thought it odd that a man was carrying a child wrapped in a blanket, but did not confront him. I, too, would have held back out of natural reticence. Not now. Now I would issue a greeting or make a comment to let the man know he had been noticed. Now, I would risk embarrassment or outrage. It's what we all should do. Anonymity is a gift to the child molester.

Madeleine McCann's kidnapping is an abomination. It deserves our ongoing attention because it is an affront to all children and to all families. If we row back on the publicity and scale down the hunt, the perpetrator (it seems to be a white male) and his ilk will feel that they have won a victory and all parents and all children will have been dealt a blow. But if it continues, if police forces across Europe and beyond search for Madeleine, they will find more than they have gone looking for. This quest could be the starting point of an international movement against this scourge. It is long overdue.

We should be grateful to Kate and Gerry McCann for their willingness to live out their fears and determination in the public eye. We should be grateful that they are young and good-looking and white professionals and whatever else it is about them that is helping to hold the headlines, since their story highlights a greater problem than their own. As long as the hunt for Madeleine holds the attention of politicians, celebrities and the public, other child abusers will be caught, other children will be found or spared. Inevitably, the day will come when Madeleine's story leaves the news bulletins. We must hope it will be when she returns home, safe and sound. Until then, we can't see too much of her.