An apology by Kelvin MacKenzie, who was editor of The Sun newspaper at the time of the Hillsborough tragedy has been rejected by a man who lost his two teenage daughters at Hillsborough
Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor of The Sun when the paper ran a front page story blaming fans for the Hillsborough tragedy, today offered his “profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool”.
Mr MacKenzie, who wrote the headline The Truth on the controversial report, said in a statement: “Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline.
The Sun's report accused Liverpool fans of stealing from the dying, urinating on policemen and beating up an officer giving the kiss of life.
“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," Mr MacKenzie said in his apology.
“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.”
Trevor Hicks, of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, rejected Mr MacKenzie’s apology as “too little, too late”,
calling him “lowlife, clever lowlife, but lowlife”.
Mr MacKenzie's apology is in stark contrast to his previous comments about the tragedy.
Speaking five years ago he said he was not sorry for the way his paper covered events at Hillsborough. Appearing on BBC1’s Question Time, he said he only apologised at the time because he was told to by his paper’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch.
That followed comments reportedly made at a private dinner where he was alleged to have said: “I’m not sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”
The Sun printed a full-page apology in 2004 describing its coverage of the disaster as “the most terrible mistake in its history”.
The reporter who wrote The Sun story said he was “aghast” at the headline.
Speaking to a BBC documentary, Hillsborough: searching for the truth, Harry Arnold said he had written a “fair and balanced” story based on “allegations”.
He said he saw Mr MacKenzie, the paper’s then editor, writing the infamous headline.
Mr Arnold said: “When I saw the headline, ‘The Truth’, I was aghast because that wasn’t what I’d written. I’d never used the words the truth.”
He said Mr MacKenzie told him not to worry and said he would “make it clear that this is what some people are saying”.
The way the Hillsborough disaster was reported in the press has been a source of anger for more than 20 years.
Today’s report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel traced the origin of the stories, which were also carried in other newspapers, to a Sheffield-based news agency which had been briefed by officers from South Yorkshire Police (SYP), a
local Police Federation spokesman and local MP Irvine Patnick.
It states the federation “supported informally by the SYP chief constable, sought to develop and publicise a version of events that focused on several police officers’ allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence among a
large number of Liverpool fans”.
The panel said the spread of misinformation began when match commander, chief superintendent David Duckenfield, told “a falsehood” that fans had broken into the ground causing the deadly crush.
That was followed by “further serious allegations... from unnamed sources” that “drunk and aggressive” fans forced entry.
The report identifies those sources as Mr Patnick and a federation spokesman.
Their allegations were reported by White’s News Agency and were based on meetings with police officers and interviews with Mr Patnick and Paul Middup, the secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation.
The report states “Mr Patnick based his comments on a conversation with police officers on the evening of the disaster while the officers were in considerable distress.”