Metro, the newspaper that prides itself on its impartiality, has made it very clear where it stands over what it calls the Sun’s “notorious” Hillsborough disaster coverage.
Its front page on Wednesday following the inquest verdict was based on a reworking of the way in which the Sun reported the tragedy in 1989 by blaming Liverpool fans for the deaths of 96 fellow supporters.
Metro’s article, headlined “The Truth”, reported that jurors had concluded that the fans were unlawfully killed, and that police had hid their own failings by accusing drunk fans. It said:
“The cover-up strategy led to the Sun’s notorious story - headlined The Truth - which wrongly said fans stole from the dead and urinated on corpses.”
The Sun, which ran less copy on the inquest verdict than every other national newspaper, did not mention it on its front page. Instead, it chose a so-so splash about David Cameron’s EU referendum so-called “texting scandal”.
But it did carry an editorial, “Justice at last”, in which it said sorry once again. It stated:
“The supporters were not to blame. But the police smeared them with a pack of lies which in 1989 the Sun and others in the media swallowed whole.
We apologised prominently 12 years ago, again four years ago on the front page, and do so unreservedly again now.”
There was no prominence for the inquest verdict. It should be pointed out that none of the Sun’s current senior staff (and the overwhelming majority of its entire staff) were working there in 1989.
But the editor responsible for the Sun’s coverage at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie, now writes a column for the paper. This has prompted angry fans to launch a petition calling on him to be “dismissed for his role in prolonging the agony of the fans’ families and spreading lies about the fans through his newspaper.”
The petition points out that as recently as April this year MacKenzie thumbed his nose at his Liverpool critics by suggesting that, should he be ennobled, he thought “Lord Kelv of Anfield has a ring about it.”
Elsewhere, the national press marked the inquest verdict with front pages and editorials reflecting their sympathy for the long fight for justice by the Hillsborough bereaved.
The Guardian referred to the “spontaneous and deeply emotional outburst on the steps of the coroner’s court in Warrington... after the jury had at last vindicated their long struggle to uncover the truth of what happened.” It continued:
“From the first blinkered inquest that recorded a verdict of accidental death that the families never accepted, to the judge who ruled out further prosecutions after the failure of a civil case, there has been a sequence of lost opportunities...
There is something repugnant in the way in which, it is now clear, the South Yorkshire police went about gathering evidence to support the narrative of blame...
Soon, sympathetic MPs and journalists were being told lies. CCTV tapes disappeared. Subsequently, evidence to the first inquiry was withheld.”
Now, said the Guardian, “the families must get the accountability that they urgently want.” And the Daily Telegraph agreed: “Just as the families were entitled to the truth denied them for so long, they now have a right to justice.”
It regarded it as “a dark episode for policing... that will live on in infamy... It also seemed inconceivable that the police would try to cover up the truth behind such an appalling event. Yet, to their great shame, they did.”
The Telegraph jettisoned MacKenzie after he had written just one column in 2013 following criticism from its own sports staff.
The Times, like its sister paper, the Sun, also carried nothing of the story on its front page in its first edition. But it changed later on (see separate piece here) to carry a picture plus a banner cross reference to its inside article.
Its editorial said: “A crucial consequence of this verdict is that Liverpool supporters, who have been repeatedly blamed for contributing to the disaster with their conduct in the Leppings Lane terrace, were exonerated.” It continued:
“There can be no question that the primary blame has to fall on the South Yorkshire police, whose reputation was shredded by the inquiry hearings.
David Duckenfield, the chief superintendent in charge, conceded to the inquiry, after years of denial, that he was too inexperienced to have taken command of such a large crowd. He accepted that his decision to allow a gate to be opened was a principal cause of the crush that led so many to their deaths. Mr Duckenfield was found by the jury to be guilty of gross negligence.”
The “drunken fans” story, said the Times, was told to the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. It said: “The verdict of unlawful killing ought not, however, to ensure that blame falls solely on the police.
“The jury came to unanimous conclusions that serious mistakes were made by the ambulance service and that the stadium was unsafe.”
The Daily Mail, which also dropped MacKenzie as a columnist in 2012 in the face of criticism from Merseyside, stated:
“For nearly three decades we have known the police handling of the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath was nothing short of a scandal...
Instead of admitting their blunders, police officers attempted to put the blame on the fans. These shameful lies long obstructed the truth about how the 96 died...
It was, however, astonishing and deeply disturbing to find the police were maintaining, even at the inquest, the utterly discredited ‘defence’ that the fans were drunk and ticketless.”
The Daily Express said the bereaved “should be proud of the role they played in exposing the wrongdoing of the police and absolving innocent fans of blame.”
And the Daily Mirror saluted “the courage, determination and dignity of the families and supporters of the dead who devoted 27 years to proving the truth in the teeth of smears, lies and insults.” It concluded:
“Now we have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the love of grieving families for those who never returned from a football match has finally exposed the evil stitch-up.”
Full disclosure: I have made a statement to the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s inquiry into the police cover-up, as have other journalists.
