“Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster. As the Prime Minister has made clear these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves. It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong.”
Caveated to point out other papers ran the allegations, but with the correct level of scepticism of the sources.
Even if Kelvin Calder Mackenzie were to top himself it still wouldn’t be enough for Scousers with a (on this occasion justified) grievance. That said Kelvin Calder Mackenzie is a despicable tosser who loves to cause offense wherever he goes.
Well said
Causes offence to me every time Brillo has him on This Week.
Poor you. Time you grew up and faced the big wide world. Where it’s possible to get really offended or much worse.
Kelvin is a Kun*t with a capital “K”.
January 1987, MacKenzie published a front-page story alleging that pop singer Elton John had had sex with underage rentboys. These claims were without any foundation and entirely false. Shortly after, MacKenzie published further allegations that the singer had had the voiceboxes of his guard dogs removed because their barking kept him awake at night. Not only were these additional claims also completely untrue, but MacKenzie confirmed their inaccuracy shortly after publication by sending a reporter to the singer’s house, who quickly discovered that all of his guard dogs were quite capable of barking (MacKenzie later admitted that in retrospect he found it difficult to understand why he had believed, never mind published, the claims about the guard dogs which he later realised were self-evidently absurd). Elton John sued The Sun for libel over both these claims and was later awarded £1,000,000 in damages.[14] MacKenzie later said of Elton John
I think The Sun should have its million quid back. It hasn’t damaged him at all, has it? Libel can only have a value if there has been some kind of damage, right? Where is the damage? Where? There’s nothing wrong with him. So no, I don’t feel bad about him, not at all.
There were many other controversies during MacKenzie’s time in charge of The Sun. MacKenzie at one point ran a story about a previously unknown member of the public who had just undergone a heart transplant operation, the story denouncing the man as a “love rat”, Sun journalists having been told that he had left his wife fifteen years earlier. Aside from criticism about the story’s highly questionable news value, the newspaper was furiously condemned as the story was run when the man’s recovery was still in the balance.[2]
Indeed, many commentators accused MacKenzie and his team of simply inventing many of the stories that appeared in the newspaper, as well as interviews, and in some instances this was proven to be the case, most notably when an entirely fabricated interview with the disfigured Falklands war hero Simon Weston was published, which was criticised for “inviting readers to feel revulsion at his disfigurement”.[5] Some other notable controversies that occurred under MacKenzie include a headline describing Australian Aborigines as “The Abo’s: Brutal and Treacherous” (which was condemned as “inaccurate” and “unacceptably racist” by the Press Council)[2] and MacKenzie’s sending of photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett, who was a patient in the hospital at the time and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy, whether he was “dying of AIDS”. The newspaper apparently suspected Brett of being a homosexual and that his mystery illness might be AIDS, which it wasn’t.[15]
These incidents caused The Sun to become a laughing stock in some quarters and to be heavily condemned in others, but the newspaper’s profile increased dramatically during MacKenzie’s time as editor although sales figures dipped. On the subject of the sensationalist and sometimes inaccurate reporting which appeared in The Sun during his time as editor, MacKenzie has said:
When I published those stories, they were not lies. They were great stories that later turned out to be untrue — and that is different. What am I supposed to feel ashamed about
A brilliant account of this rats career.
MacKenzie – ought to be banned from giving any more lectures at Bournemouth University [Media stoogeodents] But he’s in good company down there with th chancellor – both of have spent years being frugal with “The Truth”.
Who was the MP?
Irvine Patnick – tory mp for somewhere or other – no idea what became of him.
Drowned in his own shit.
Here is the kind-of answer.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/hillsborough-files-report-raises-spectre-of-criminal-cases-and-shaming-1-2522157
Mackenzie media career saved. But the Whining scousers wont be happy with that.
Big boy made him do it.
twat
“Whining Scousers” – if 23 years of fighting The Establishment, to make sure the truth about wholesale corruption emerges, is whining…then we’re very proud and determined whiners. You on the other hand, are an ignorant prick !!
What a terrible c**t. What he meant to say of course is that is has taken two decades of him denying the quite overwhelming evidence.
F*CK OFF AND DIE. KELVIN THE SCUM OF THE EARTH.
Shame he’s a white anglo saxon, otherwise you would no doubt have made a disparaging comment about his ethnicity.
K McK doesn’t seem very anglo saxon to me!
Don’t you dare blame it on the Scots.
Not the story as Harry Arnold told it earlier this week.
first rule … check the FACTS
second rule (apparently)
whats it worth?
I’m just a reporter. I report what I’m told.
remember the old newspaper adage “if its a chose between the truth and the legend always print the legend”
First rule: sell papers.
This toad does not care about honest journalism. He has no place in public life.
Eh! Eh! ARE YOU STARTIN’? They do though, don’t they though!
it had nuffink to do withg me guv – I’m innocent!
‘ow much for the interview? a monkey? – yer jokin!
Remind me again…..where is Liverpool?
it’s that shit hhole at the end of the M62, full of thieves and liars.
You know the ones who spent 40 years mocking the Munich disaster.
The same ones who killed all those italians at Heysel.
W.W.
Well said W.W.
Full of thieves and liars. I thought that was in a place somewhere in SW1.
The reason it is 98% white, is given the choice your average somali would rather go home.
W.W.
WW, Liverpool is NOT a “s***hole” and the liars who are involved in this matter are MacKenzie, S.Yorkshire Police and Thatcher.
You WW, are the sort of blinkeredly vacuous tosspot whom MacKenzie would have loved as a journalist on his chip wrapper.
P.S. The families are not “whining”. They want justice for the loved ones they had lost in 1989, and if you were one of them, you would too.
Your humanity is a credit to you.
This disgusting filthmonger’s views should never be printed anywhere. Least of all today. How does he get an outlet? You should not be giving him one. He is a vile, sub-human, evil vampire.
Incredible that he somehow manages a way to get yet another headline out of his urinating on the graves of the 96.
He’s apologised. He’s explained how he came to report what he did – ie he reported what the police (and an MP told him. The MP (probably) having been told the same story by the police since he (the MP) was unlikely to have been at the match and had any first-hand knowledge.
Folk seem to forget that, at the time, football was seen a distraction from pitched battles between opposition supporters. That’s why there were cages. To keep the thuggish elements apart.
It surprised nobody at the time (apart from Liverpool fans) that allegations that thousands of drunk, ticketless fans would show up late expecting entry and that, having been allowed in (to avoid a civil disorder situation) that a disaster had occurred.
There wasn’t any particular ‘anti-Liverpool’ sentiment although they (Liverpool) had prior form at Heysel. It just seemed an entirely plausible chain of events. That’s why nobody paid any attention to the Liverpool fans/campaigners after the event.
A response worthy of someone who is obviously as big a Kun*t as Kelvin.
And/or was on his payroll.
INDEED.
Dear, ‘Jgm2′ – fuck off and top yourself, you sad c’unt.
signed,
Humanity.
calm down calm down.
JGM2 is correct.
given the prior history of the wendyball scum at Heysel and other riots football fans are themselves partly to blame
Can that be possible?
Can it be possible he/she is as big a c*** as Mc Bastard?
Also, amongst football fans, scousers were very unpopular for their perceievd thieving and cowardly behaviour. People from Liverpool were often made unwelcome at England games in the 80s. I remember it well.
“It surprised nobody ….” apart from the police, who had no idea what to do.
I think they did the same thing they did on previous occasions when this occurred. Threw open the gates and let everybody in.
Never had a problem before…
you’ve not read about “gate C” story then.
They needed to put stewards in the entrances to make the fans go into the empty areas.
.
.
before sun newspaper listened to the police.
later police listened to sun’s sister newspaper News of the World.
loyalty sells?
its only a game
Where 96 people died
We will now have 23 years of South Yorkshire police campaigning for inquiry to prove the scousers are just a bunch of thieving, dr*nken hooligans after all and this enquiry was just a white wash to allow Dave to preen and appolgise for something that was not his fault in order to make him look good.
do you remember S Yks Police ‘blacking up’ incident – they re-coloured candidates in an ID parade
and the police band had to remove ‘smoke gets in my eyes’ from their repertoire
like he did with Bloody Sunday
wouldn’t it be a nice world if people like Mckenzie and the sh*t at ofqual had the decency to take responsibility for which the were paid. They should shut up and go away.
Would be an even better world if politicians were people of integrity,honesty,decency & were able to put the country before their rapacious greed for personal enrichment.
Plenty of arse covering by the police et al but and I know it is utter utter heresy to say this…
when police ‘lose control’ over a crowd. the people in the crowd have to bear some element of responsibility themselves no. I don’t mean the poor folk in the stadium getting crushed but those outside effectively forcing police to open gates the police shouldn’t have opened. Sorry, but plenty of blame applies to the crowd.
Liverpool fans cf heysel have form in behaving badly but hey ho no-one is allowed to level any criticism at them whatsoever for Hillsborough.
Anyway. I’m heading up to Liverpool in a couple of weeks, anyone got any recommendations where to go.
harrogate
The marina, near the echo arena. excellent bars and resturants
Plenty of details in what the police got wrong.
I wasn’t aware of the whole “gate C” bit until today. They cocked that up, something rotten. They are a little better at admiting to fault these days.
Contrast this to the french interior minister the other day, outraged that anyone could suggest that leaving a child in a car full of dead people all night was anything that anyone could possibly question their actions.
“Liverpool fans cf heysel have form in behaving badly but hey ho no-one is allowed to level any criticism at them whatsoever for Hillsborough.
Anyway. I’m heading up to Liverpool in a couple of weeks, anyone got any recommendations where to go.”
……..how about for a swim in the Mersey
Norris Green.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. You could actually stay on the Wirral. My area is quite up-market and very quintessentially English. Our local railway station is most attractive and built in 1938 in a very modern style to co-incide with the electrification of the Wirral Lines. There are trains to Liverpool every 15 minutes with a punctuality rate 98.5%. You’ll also notice that 98.5% of Wirral’s population is white.
Suggestion before you go to Liverpool. Don’t tell anyone that you think there’s a link between Heysel and Hillsborough. Your ignorance will make you a little unpopular.
A barrage from Farage….
They are not listening now. Perhaps they never will.
Another masterly exposition of the truth about the EU;we won’t shake off their shackles under the present Con/Lib/Lab setup, who are all EU lovers.
Investigative journalism at it’s finest and at a cost 20p a copy. The truth – unresearched sensationalist carp by a soundbite editor (a poor one at that!). RM must be humble.
kelvin mckenzie built his career on controversial and often offensive headlines. One suspects he has finally got his comeuppance.
This is absolute nonsense, and a complete travesty. MacKenzie was happy to take what he was given or told by the coverers-up, no questions asked, no investigation made, no other sources apparently.
Having failed at the very basic journalistic level, he then proceeded to do what the Sun does best – over-egg the pudding by taking a lie and multiplying it a thousand-fold; and then produce a torrent of lies and abuse about the subjects of his vile Yellow Journalism.
Misled, was he? All my eye and Betty Martin, he was. HE was doing the misleading.
Interesting name.
Did your son-in-law tell you that?
The media is a disgrace.
No thread on the Main site Guido. Oh dear worried are you.
Yet more of Daves friends exposed as SCUM !!!
The Sun backing the Tories in 2015 …. bets anyone
Has Kelvin’s mate at The Scum Trev Kavanagh been arrested yet.
Oy vey! More tit and arse on page 5,7,9,… !
How many times did the Sun back the Labour vandals? Three or four?
the job of the ‘popular press’ journo is to give the mob what it wants to hear – which is generally what the mob thinks it knows anyway (the mob of course doesn’t believe all it reads in the papers, does it?)
if a ‘story’ lasts too long the danger is that the mob will find out that it was suckered – and it don’t like that – so it must find other ogres; before too long (20 years is an eternity for people with 20 second attention spans) everyone is an ogre – except of course the mob itself
“absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie”
Was he naive to believe that?
and is anyone naive enough to believe him now?
Sit back and enjoy Kelvin and his News Scumternational chums squirm.
Original text from the Sheffield news agency which caused the allegations
http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/docs/NGN000000010001.pdf
Odd font. I’m not going to say thats impossible for 1989.
I wonder why other newspapers didn’t pick this up. I would have thought that any such report from a news agency would be “spammed” across all papers. (unless Sun bought the exclusive rights to this).
Other newspapers did, but they did not run with it on the front page. The Left-leaning media don’t want you to know about that.
It’s got very specific allegations and quotes. If you were handed this by a (supposedly reputable) agency then it’s no wonder The Sun ran with it.
One tragedy is that, even if it does turn out to be a complete work of fiction is that Liverpool fans had such a bad reputation that all this seemed entirely plausible. If somebody had made the same allegations at a cricket match then eyebrows would have been raised.
But a Liverpool match? Post Heysel?
(I just looked up Heysel to refamiliarise myself with the facts. I’d forgotten that they actually played the fucking match even after 39 people had died to avoid further violence.)
That’s why the rest of the country had no time for the Liverpool fan’s version of events. It had the ring of truth about it.
people would have believed it about all english football fans.
Indeed.
An old classmate (I wouldn’t call him a friend as he was a bit of a shit at school, but honest enough) was at the match, and told me and others later that The Sun had got it EXACTLY right, especially the urinating on the dead and stealing the wallets of the dead and dying.
He was a Liverpool fan at the time, Liverpool being the Manchester United of their day, but he actually used to go to their games, travelling all over the country to see them. As far as I’m aware he hasn’t been to a match since.
Wake up dickhead. Do you still believe your old school mate?
Bearing in mind that I met him about a month after the event and he was still in a right state then, as he was only a little lad and had actually been in the Leppings Lane End when it happened and especially due to his size could easily have brought the number up to 97, then yes, I did believe him. As I said, he was a loyal Liverpool fan, travelling all over the country to watch them. He had no reason to lie, unlike many people on all sides.
“I’d forgotten that they actually played the fucking match even after 39 people had died to avoid further violence”
Surprised they lost then if Juventus weren’t playing!!
They did pick it up. They just chose to report it as “Police claim that…” rather than “THE TRUTH”
Express front page: http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/docs/PRE000000560001.pdf
Mirror page 2: http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/repository/docs/PRE000000400001.pdf
That’s a pretty damning report.
Are we now being told it was a complete work of fiction?
We have been told it was fiction for years.
There is a distinct lack of eye witnesses, or video footage of it happening. And it was being broadcast on live TV at the time.
We were told it was fiction by Liverpool fans but then they’re hardly going to be giving it ‘Yeah, we were pissed as rats, looking to crash the game in our thousands and didn’t give a fuck…’ are they?
They’re going to be looking to blame any other fucker but themselves.
you are doing that thing of yours again.
Don’t you understand that you cannot approximate a group of people into one single straw man in your head?
Never mind the fans, who will have varying levels of gittyness and scousness, you’ve got to ignore the police, the other fans, the journalists, the TV cameras. All of them, just as bad as the worst drunken scouse straw man in your imagination.
Eh?
I’m simply pointing out that when The Sun reported thefts from the injured/dead, policemen being pissed on, drunken fans crushing in without tickets nobody (or very few people) questioned whether that was true or not.
It was entirely in keeping with expected football hooligan behaviour at the time.
No. You’ve been told it’s fiction by an Independant Review Panel who have spent over 2 years looking at over 400,000 pieces of evidence. What more do you want?
i recon we send you to atos(ser) ti see if your fit to be a human being ,congrats to liverpool families at last the truth
Can’t we all just put Hillsborough behind us already?
I try to put Heysel and Hillsborough behind me. Not only because both were tragic but the mere mention of the names remind me of the dark, dark days of Thatcherism.
Liverpool had a good football team when Thatcher was PM.
Yes, it was Everton!
96 people died. …which should never have happened…,,and you want to get over it.
From a BBC news report with the release of government papers covering the tragedy, includes the following:
“The most controversial issue in the papers that the BBC has seen relates to what Mrs Thatcher was being told about the views of some senior members of the Merseyside Police Force.
They are contained in a letter sent to the prime minister from a member of her policy unit in Downing Street. Four days after the disaster, the adviser attended a long planned meeting with the chief constable of Merseyside Police, the late Sir Kenneth Oxford, and some of his senior colleagues.
According to the letter, the Merseyside chief constable said: “A key factor in causing the disaster was the fact that large numbers of Liverpool fans had turned up without tickets.
“This was getting lost sight of in attempts to blame the police, the football authorities, etc.”
The prime minister was informed that a senior member of the Merseyside Police directly blamed supporters: “One officer, born and bred in Liverpool, said that he was deeply ashamed to say that it was drunken Liverpool fans who had caused this disaster, just as they had caused the deaths at Heysel.”"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17382896
Ask the people who live around Hillsborough, who witnessed the behaviour outside the ground and in the pubs around about, and the Wednesday fans. You might get a sense that Liverpool fans circa 1989 are divided into two groups. The decent ones with tickets, who behave and just wanted to watch a game of football and enjoy a day out. And the others, who just wanted to get drunk, break the law and crash a football game without tickets and no regard for the safety of others, even though they KNEW there were no tickets left, that the stands would be full. If we are at last to have the truth, let’s have it, all of it.
Will the enquiry that will follow this be brave enough to invite them? Will they be brave enough to attend? Will they be listened to if they do?
Were they any different to other fans? Plenty of club’s fans have rampaged around Hillsborough over the years. Spurs v Wolves had a lot of problems a few years earlier.
Yes they had. Liverpool just brought more fans. Probably because they’re a lot closer than Spurs or Wolves.
Man Utd supporters were no better.
More fans’s were allowed in than the ground was fit to hold and the authorities knew it! You make it sound like it was the fans’ fault for turning up to the match. Can we assume they were,’culpable’ for believing the ground was fit for purpose and a safe venue?
No for the fans with tickets, yes for the many fans without tickets – or are you trying to suggest there were more tickets in existence than space in the ground? I think not.
And from what I’ve read of the PDF of the news agency copy (see above) it still seems entirely plausible that a small number of fans did behave in the way suggested – some perhaps explained by their anger with the police handling of the event, others because they were stupid tossers for whom pissing on the police etc. might seem funny.
None of that though excuses the police cover-up of their mismanagement of the operation.
Am also glad to see Heysel mentioned here – completely absent from mainstream media coverage – but very relevant to how Liverpool fans behaved back then.
Read the report. You’re talking shit.
Read the report….and then hang your head.
Kelvin Mackenzie believed everything he was told by the authorities in the same way that Gordon Brown believed everything he was told by bankers. They are both c’unts.
YEA!!!!!!
He’s a used nappy.
Full of shit.
you only have to read what the Sun said about Freddie Mercury in the months before he died to know that all who worked there were scum.
‘I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster.’
You’re supposed to be a JOURNALIST Kelvin. The first assumption of a proper journalist is to ‘believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive’. You should have listened to your Dad, that decent man Ian Mackenzie. He would have told you.
They didn’t dig too deep over the Iraq war WMD claim either did they?
And who leaked the Hutton report to Trevor Kavanagh? Kavanagh’s sins [Plural] are all yet to be exposed.
In today’s society the word ‘Hunt’ has lost a lot of it’s effect due to overuse. Which is a shame, because when you really, really want an insult to carry some element of power, it’s simply not up to the same kind of shock and awe it used to carry.
However, with all the emphasis I can muster… ‘Fuck off Mackenzie, you Hunt!’
Crap, it has even less power now!
This is what Boris Johnson had to say to Liverpool fans and the families of the 96 dead http://tinyurl.com/8szuhg4 #Hillsborough
Stand up guy. What a heroic figure at this time of hurt and outrage. He was then too. I’d never change my opinion on him
Is he going to identify the senior police officer and local MPs?
What a piece of worthless lying shit! It Is an insult just to hear the fat useless fuckers name!
It seems Boris Johnson has remained silent so far about the report or his school chum Cameroon’s remarks today re hillsborough.
Any chance of a fabulous donation to the Liverpool victims charity by Mr McKenzie?
sorry but how can you blame the police etc when louts without tickets gate crash a football ground. why go to sheffield knowing that you couldn’t get in,unless you intended to get in without paying.
Even the greatest group in the world The Beatles couldn’t wait to move to london.says it alli think
Read the fucking report before you come out with such crap.
Nobody emerges from this tragedy with any credit .Not the authorities, the press or the spectators.The only persons who cannot be sullied by all this are those unfortunates who lost their lives. But never mind it’s still the best country on earth , moral exemplar to the world etc etc or maybe not?
Now, about Heysel …
There is no doubt that Kelvin Mackenzie is pure box office. I have never seen anyone (David Starkey doesn’t even come close to him) talk so much authorative, opinionated, offensive rubbish in all my life. He shouldn’t really offend anyone, however, as he has got to be a total wind up merchant to come up with the shite he does. More damaging however is his professional competence (or lack of it) when Editor of the Sun. You would have thought that the long arm of the law could find a way of prosecuting him for the criminal irresponsibility which many people believe him to be guilty of. The thought of him in an Arrow suit braking stones amuses me.
There seems to be a divergence of opinion about the “Scousers”; some good, some bad. I had the privilege of spending time with the Kings Regiment at Spandau Barracks in Berlin when Speer and Hess were still incarcerated there in the early 60s. I found the “Scousers” to be a great bunch of lads.
Bernard Hogan Howe the current Met Commissioner, is a former S Yorks Police Officer and was at Hillsborough on the day. Do you remember when the PM was looking for somenone to replace Stephenson, (who was forced to resign for the phone hack cover up – although no one has explicitly said so), anyway the PM took a look at the candidates and publicly said that he wanted to look outside the UK, the USA to be exact, in the end he had to apponit a Brit, his reluctance was all to apparent. Does the PM know which piece of this iceberg will be exposed next.