So this morning it might have been expected that the Sun and its columnists might have thought twice before offering up yet more clumsily structured excuses. It was a false expectation. Less than an hour after the BBC2 documentary ended, today’s column from still unrepentant former editor Kelvin MacKenzie was published. It’s clear that he had written it before the documentary aired, and in full knowledge that it would be aired.
Kel damns himself as he tells “Superintendent David Duckenfield had stuck to the line from day one that it was the Liverpool fans who had forced open the gates when, as he finally revealed at the inquest, it was he who gave the order … Why didn’t he say this on the day of or the day after the tragedy? I presume the officers who actually opened the gates knew it was a lie”. Kel knows someone else who knows it was a lie, too.
Kelvin MacKenzie saw that front page before committing it to publication the evening before. He approved every last detail within it. Yet now he whines “Why didn’t they say something? What about [David] Duckenfield’s superiors? Didn’t they hear anything?” But his reporters must have heard something, because the information that he claims was withheld from him was there on the front page of his own paper.
So when he blubbers “I fell for the lies lock, stock and barrel”, he is flat out lying. The decision to smear the Liverpool fans and airbrush out the less convenient parts of the story was his, and his alone. He chose not only to accept the smears and deflections, but to maintain that storyline when all other news sources were rowing back on it. And here we are 27 years later, with this amateur human being still lying to cover his backside.
To still peddle those lies the morning after the BBC broadcast that documentary shows that MacKenzie, and the paper that employs him, have no shame. Don’t Buy The Sun.
Tying the above with last night's impassioned pro-BBC speeches at the Baftas. Can you ever envisage Murdoch's Sky ever making a programme such as this? I don't think that channel would ever rock the boat and ask a lot of embarrassing questions about the government, the(mainly) right-wing press and the police? Don't hold your breath!
ReplyDeleteTim,
ReplyDeleteMackenzie isn't even "an amateur human being."
He's a piece of disgusting cowardly cockney detritus floating among the other turds in the Thames. Murdoch-Rothermere and their cowering gutless jobsworths are even worse.
The inquest finding is just the beginning of the search for justice. The evil in this runs a whole lot deeper than the appalling self-admitted liar Duckenfield and the masonic system in Yorkshire. It stretches right the way through our corrupt neocon legal system, civil servants in Whitehall, politicians in Westminster, media mouthpieces and of course the financial institutions.
There can be no end until ALL the guilty men and women are identified and made to face honest democratic justice. To see the extent of this you need only to see reruns of Thatcher spitting at everyone in reach, egged on by gobshites like Howe, Parkinson, Jenkin and Tebbitt, supported by utter economic fascists like Patrick Minford and all the other crackpots. They are the just some of the people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light - for the dead, nothing but the truth.
And the same goes for the economic destruction of Britain in favour of a tiny corner of the country.
The guilty men and women were the instigators of this horror. They are the ones who made it all possible, and who left us this legacy of a grotesquely divided society. Thatcher, of course, stole lunatic Russian fascist Ayn Rand's line that "There's no such thing as society."
Meanwhile, Mackenzie and his type remain the Nazi cowards they have always been. And there'll always be some Little Englander more than ready to accept Murdoch's bribery when Mackenzie finally shuffles off this mortal coil to hell - gawd knows he's got it coming.
But there'll be no ready return to decency and fairness until enough people decide they won't buy Mackenzie's creepy paranoid and gutless propaganda or the Nazi politics he tries to spread.
It's all very well to blame McKenzie, he is an odious little man and undoubtedly was responsible for much of the papers tone on Hillsborough. However I doubt that a headline so likely to offend was not run past Rupert Murdoch first - it is also entirely likely that Murdoch instructed McKenzie to run the stories.
ReplyDeleteEither way, almost thirty years later, Mckenzie - who brought the paper it's most criticized story ever, costing it's entire Liverpool circulation - is still on Mutdochs payroll. Now we have seen Murdochs loyalty on display more recently when he rehired Rebecca Brooks, Brooks enjoys extraordinary standing in Murdochs empire. She is also one of the few executives in the world who has actually gone before an inquiry to testify on her complete inability to do her job. Fortunately for her it was ruled that she was indeed, completely incompetent and not able to perform her role - not a criminal who had repeatedly and knowingly broken the law, as well as any journalistic ethics.
There a possibility that Murdoch is the most forgiving boss on the planet - even if some refute it. Or there is the possibility that Murdoch was behind the story - it was rather odd that the final verdict of the unlawful killing of the 96 did not make front page news in two newspapers, the Sun and the Times?
The BBC deserved the praise it was given this weekend for its documentary on Hillsborough - it trended #1 on Twitter,even displacing the top trend of the weekend, which was the brilliance of David Attenborough, whose work was funded and made possible by the BBC .
It ought to be of more concern to,people that as the BBC prepared to air the documentary, it remained under siege from Whittingdale who seems hell bent on destroying it. A move which would benefit Murdoch and his empire immensely. - The same empire who sat silent on Whittingdales indiscretions for two years, finding it not in the public interest that the man in charge of broadcast and print ethics had been involved in a series of tax payer subsidized affairs with a dominatrix, two porn stars and a stripper.
If you do not support the BBC and allow Murdoch to demand and receive its destruction, you can kiss documentaries or serious reporting on stories such as Hillsborough goodbye. Though sometimes flawed, they remain the most reliable and trusted media corporation on the planet. Without them the Murdoch version of events will become the only version.
The carrot and stick tactics will hang the lot of them.
ReplyDeleteBring it on.
Leveson 2.