Mr McCann gave a witness statement at the Leveson Inquiry on behalf of himself and his wife in November 2011.
In it, he described news outlets “making stories up” about them, as well as a “sustained, inaccurate and malicious series of headlines in a number of papers which gave the impression that we were in some way responsible for or involved in Madeleine’s disappearance”.
He also said around the time their daughter disappeared, the now-closed News of the World newspaper had published complete transcripts from Kate McCann’s personal diary.
That diary had been seized by police in Portugal as part of their investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, and the couple were “unsure as to how the [News of the World] obtained a copy”, the inquiry heard.
In his interview with the Today programme, Mr McCann said: “Madeleine’s been missing for 18 years, and the bottom line is, we still don’t know what’s happened to her.”
He added that there is “no evidence”.
“I don’t even mean ‘convincing’ evidence – there is no evidence to say she’s dead,” he said.
“Now we fully understand she may be dead, it may even be probable, but we don’t know that.”
A spokesperson for press regulator Ipso told the BBC that it can intervene directly in cases of press harassment.
“We encourage anyone with concerns about press behaviour to contact us for help,” it said.
