The Sun - From Hillsborough To Hacking

Yesterday marked the 33rd anniversary of that fateful FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, where Liverpool were to play Nottingham Forest for a place in the Wembley final. Except the match had to be abandoned after a few minutes as a fatal crush developed in the lower level central pen of the Leppings Lane end. 97 Liverpool fans never came home. But some in our free and fearless press didn’t leave it there.

Evening all

The Murdoch Sun, edited at the time by the deeply unpleasant Kelvin McFilth, blamed those same Liverpool fans for the tragedy. Other papers ran the smear; the difference was that everyone else withdrew the claims and apologised. The Murdoch mafiosi maintained the pretence that they were right; on Merseyside, the Sun became a pariah newspaper, and its circulation has never recovered. Nor has its reputation.

But at least the Sun has managed not to become tarred with the same brush as the late and not at all lamented Screws, whose demise was hastened by revelations of the endemic phone hacking that went on there. Until yesterday.

The Murdoch empire recently failed to bring phone hacking claims to an end. But, as Guardian media editor Jim Waterson has pointed out, “the still-publishing Sun and the defunct News of the World are owned by the same parent company, which means it can settle cases against the latter on the condition that victims cannot bring a separate claim against the former”. So denials of Sun wrongdoing can be maintained.

However, and here’s the sting in the tail, “individuals who secured some of the first phone-hacking settlements in the early 2010s … were not asked to agree to such terms”. And yesterday, on the 33rd anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, came the news that actor and campaigner Hugh Grant, who was one of those early claimants, had returned to the fray to bring a second phone hacking claim - specifically against the Sun.

Maybe not such a happy bunny this Easter

This brings an almighty headache for the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker: the Sun was edited at the time by Rebekah Brooks, now News UK’s CEO. She and her team would rather focus on the imminent launch of TalkTV, whose star presenter is former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan. Which just takes us back to phone hacking.

As Waterson points out, “Morgan has himself faced ongoing accusations - which he strenuously denies - that he must have known about the practice while editor of the Daily Mirror in the 2000s … Reach, the current owner of the Daily Mirror, is also facing lengthy and ongoing legal claims for historical phone-hacking offences at its tabloid newspapers”.

And what's more, Ron ...

And guess what? “Prince Harry also has a case working its way through the courts alleging wrongdoing at the Sun, the News of the World and the publisher of the Mirror”. It was the hacking of the Princes’ phones that set the whole ball rolling back in 2006. Today’s Sun editorial sneers at Haz. Morgan will be airing his obsession with Megs very soon, maybe alongside his hatred of Hugh G. What goes around has come around.

Murdoch, Ms Brooks and Morgan want so much to leave that less favourable part of their collective pasts behind. Sadly for them, it just keeps on coming back to haunt them.

While we are reminded of that wisest of Merseyside advice: Don’t Buy The Sun.

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