Wednesday 4 May 2016

Kelvin MacKenzie & 'The Truth'


A SHAMEFACED Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, was ambushed by the media last week following the finding of an inquest jury that the 96 fans who died at Hillsborough were unlawfully killed and went on to pinpoint police failures before and after the 1989 FA Cup semi-final. 
Mr. MacKenzie, when The Sun editor in 1989, had printed a front page which wrongly accused the Liverpool fans’ hooliganism and as a contributing factor to the death of 96 people.
Now, it seems, Kelvin MacKenzie regards himself as 'a victim' of Hillsborough in so far as he claims that he was duped into believing the police accounts at the time. 
Last Friday, on the News Quiz on Radio Four Jeremy Hardy said MacKenzie was taken-in because at the time 'he had wanted to believe' the false police accounts that some Liverpool fans had urinated on police and had picked the pockets of the dead.
According to the Huffington Post the former Sun editor, MacKenzie told an ITV reporter who cornered him at Weybridge station in Surrey:

'It’s been an absolute disgrace what the police have done in South Yorkshire these last 27 years.
'I feel desperate for the families and I also feel that in some strange way that I got caught up in it. I feel terrible for them.'


This is a rather poor response from one of the gentlemen of the press, who should have known better.





Meanwhile, last week, the Daily Mirror, a rival to The Sun, was gloating:
'Former newspaper editor Kelvin MacKenzie claimed he “got caught up” in the Hillsborough cover-up.  Mr MacKenzie signed off on the The Sun’s shameful ‘The Truth’ front page in the wake of the 1989 disaster. '

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