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Does Kelvin McKenzie deserve an apology from the South Yorkshire police?

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sp1814 | 14:40 Sat 29th Sep 2012 | News
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good grief, NO!!
The arrogant git printed it, it's his fault, no-one elses.
Comes with the job.
The police fed the same lies to everybody, and have apologised to everybody for it. I don't see that he needs a special apology just for him.

Kelvin needs to ask himself how he ended up vilified more than anybody else ...
No. He was responsible for the headline. A responsible editor would only have said, at worst, that there were "some reports of",or "some claims of" not state that that was the whole truth or , directly or by innuendo, that the the dead were responsible for their own fate.That may be why the Sun got singled out, if it was.

Quite what action he can take if the police don't apologise to him personally is not immediately clear. They'd be best advised not to, but to leave it as a general apology, lest he gets encouraged to think that they are admitting responsibility for the personal loss and suffering he talks of.
I don't know much about this case, but if the Police had issued a statement of their findings to the press, and having no reason to disbelieve them, Kelvin McKenzie was in his right to publish the police's press release, and not having any reason to disbelieve it, he was also in his right to headline it 'THE TRUTH : 96 DEAD'.

If I have this right, then he has every right to demand an apology from the South Yorkshire Police.

But please feel free, (and I know you certainly will) to correct me if I am wrong.
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AOG

The police at the time had not conducted an enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster. The story The Sun published was from unverified 'sources' within the South Yorkshire police. These stories were indeed fed to various newspapers, but Th Sun took the police at their word, without any form of verification.

If they were to publish those allegations, they really should've issued a form of caveat, such as 'Police claim...'

Responsible journalism demands a degree of rigour when publishing potentially explosive stories, which mean digging around to establish facts, rather than believing one source.

All this is compounded by the fact that Mr McKenzie apologised for the headline some years later, then retracted it, saying, "We were right then, and we are right now".

He's subsequently retracted the retraction.
Although hindsight, if of interest to you, here are some relevant documents.

The White's News Agency (Sheffield) 'copy' of the allegations, as provided to many national and local media outlets...

http://hillsborough.i...s/NGN000000010001.pdf

A number of national newspapers reported some of the allegations while choosing to omit the more dubious claims; The Sun and The Daily Star included the complete copy. The Star and other nationals apologised the following day for their publications while The Sun (MacKenzie) stuck firm.


The contemporaneous notes of Irvine Patnick MP, who did not attend the match but was a visitor/observer during the aftermath...

http://hillsborough.i...s/HOM000016460001.pdf

In the presence of his acquaintance "Ch Supt David Duckworth" [Ch Supt David Duckenfield] he notes the allegations of serving officers that mirror the White's copy and is immediately followed by the line "I was advised by senior officers to take what had been said 'with a pinch of salt'".

MacKenzie claimed the news agency copy had been corroborated by Patnick and Duckenfield.
editors are supposed to evaluate the stories they plan to run, not just rush every bit of nonsense into print

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-middle-east-19764166
His 'personal vilification' has got nothing to do with Yorkshire Police, they did not write his copy for him and did not vilify him afterwards.

If he truly feels he was and is still being unjustly treated by Liverpool fans and whoever else then he should ask for an apology from them. Can't really see that happening though for some reason - he'd rather just get a statement from Yorkshire Police to wave in peoples faces.
No.

As editor of a national newspaper, you are given different and contradictionary versions of events from different sources. Kelvin McKenzie chose to believe one version of events and print those details, even though there were contradictorry and alternative accounts he could have also printed.

The fact that he was either lazy, or so fecking stupid that he went along with the official cover up is not much of an excuse now.

He made the call 23 years ago and now he has to live with that discussion.

His pathetic shirking of respinsibility the last coue of weeks just shows him up as a weak idiot never fit to run a national newspaper let alone the best selling one. Jumpers are usually found out. It has taken 23 years for McKenzies star to wane, t hopefully his ugly mug will never grace our screens again.
No.
Gromit, your vitriolic outburst has nothing to do with him being a right-winger by any chance ?

Strange how the virtues of Plod and how they always tell the truth were bandied about by the left on this site when a Tory Politician was perported to be lying but when a right winger complains (and can now prove) Plod lied it is a different kettle of fish.

Make you minds up.

And for the record, no, he should not get an apology, comes with the territory as already stated above.
no chance that some police lie and some do not, I suppose, youngmafbog? It's got to be all or nothing?

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