A Sheffield-based news agency has expressed its shock at how The Sun handled a story it filed in the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy.
Yesterday’s report by an independent panel on the 1989 disaster identified Whites Press Agency as the source of the story blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush that resulted in 96 deaths.
The story, which appeared in the Murdoch-owned tabloid under the infamous headline ‘The Truth,’ had been based on interviews with South Yorkshire police officers and the then Conservative MP for Sheffield Hallam, Irvine Patnick.
The report found that the story was part of a concerted police effort “to develop and publicise a version of events that focused on…allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence.”
The agency issued a statement yesterday stressing that the story it filed was reporting allegations as opposed to the’ truth’ and that it was “shocked” at how the Sun had handled it.
It said: “Several reporters from this agency had some involvement in covering the Hillsborough tragedy and the aftermath.
“In common with many other journalists, reporters from this agency spoke to the then Sheffield Hallam MP Irvine Patnick. A senior reporter, who has since died, and with long standing police connections, also spoke to senior officers.
“As result, as a responsible and reputable agency, we did report the allegations to all the national newspapers and media outlets.
“The agency had no control over how the allegations were presented and were shocked by the way the story was presented by the Sun. Other newspapers reported the allegations in a different way.
“We welcome the publication of all documents relating to the Hillsborough tragedy and hope it brings some measure of closure for those affected. We have no further comment to make.”
Speaking in the Commons, Prime Minister David Cameron said the reports were “clearly wrong and caused huge offence, distress and hurt.”
The Sun’s then editor Kelvin Mackenzie has now offered a “profuse apology” for the headline, which he said would have been more accurate had it read “The Lies.”
Said Kelvin: “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.
“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.”
The paper itself apologised in an editorial published in today’s edition which carried the front page headline: ‘The Real Truth.’
It said: “The Sun’s reporting of the Hillsborough tragedy 23 years ago is without doubt the blackest day in this newspaper’s history.
“The Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report into the disaster lays bare the disgraceful attempt by South Yorkshire Police to hide their culpability behind a smokescreen of lies.
“It highlights a concerted campaign by senior officers to smear the innocent by fabricating lurid allegations about Liverpool fans — and then feeding them to the media.
“But it is to the eternal discredit of The Sun that we reported as fact this misinformation which tarnished the reputation of Liverpool fans including the 96 victims.
“Today we unreservedly apologise to the Hillsborough victims, their families, Liverpool supporters, the city of Liverpool and all our readers for that misjudgment.”
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Can you be shocked at the way your information was treated several decades later?
This attempted Whiteswash to distance itself from The Lies doesn’t fool anyone.
Have they just remembered the sequence of events or are they finally plucking up the `courage’ to dob in an important client – after it has already been convicted?
No wonder the agency is eager to draw a line under the affair. They should be ashamed it has taken all this time to come clean.
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Murky indeed
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I have read the original copy sent by White’s which has been published on the Guardian’s website and it is remarkably similar to The Sun’s infamous front page.
You have to ask yourself how they imagined that copy would be used, especially by a recklessly sensationalist newspaper that The Sun was under Kelvin Mackenzie.
White’s may well have sent the copy in complete good faith and may have been a victim of the South Yorkshire Police cover-up but what did they imagine some of their clients would do with it?
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I have also read the copy filed by Whites and the police’s version is presented as fact, NOT as they say in yesterday’s statement as just ‘allegations’.
The intro reads: ‘Angry police hit back yesterday at Liverpool fans who hampered life-saving attempts after the Hillsborough horror’.
Note they did not write ‘who they claim hampered’ but the bald ‘fact’ that fans hampered attempts to save their fellow supporters.
It continues in this vein – the punches at the police, the urinating on dead bodies, all presented as fact not allegations.
I’m shocked that Whites have not apologised (are they the only body yet to do so?) but are still trying to justify what they filed.
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Missing the point Tim and Curious – do you work in PR, by any chance? Reporters report, and White’s evidently filed copy containing allegations from what, at the time, they say they believed to be reliable authorities. We know differently now, of course, that those authorities were not reliable – perhaps to the point, it may turn out, of criminal liability. Agencies file the strongest copy they can because like most people, they have to make a living – they are not the Women’s Institute. What the clients do with copy is beyond their reach, and indeed, their concern. Rhetoric of the sort: “What did they imagine some of their clients would do with it?” is not coherent. I suspect the makers of WKD or Stella or Tesco’s Vin De Table don’t spend too much time worrying about what the punters might get up to after they’ve necked a dozen bottles. Establishment cover-ups are nothing new – Hillsborough is just one of them, sadly.
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I think there is a knee-jerk view of Liverpudlians as brash, cocky loudmouths etc. Of course, a minority are but this whole episode played into the hands of people already bigoted against the city. Thus when gross allegations about Liverpool fans were made on that fateful day, this animosity too quickly reared up and the allegations were treated as facts. I doubt they would have been treated as such if the tragedy had happened, say, in Bristol or Cambridge.
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Interestingly, the attempts at official cover-up now are much less successful – see the Ian Tomlinson case. Imagine what would have happened had thousands of people in the Hillsborough crowd had video and camera phones. As someone who regularly sees flammed up agency copy, the first lesson you learn is check it out yourself or publish at your peril.
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The Hillsborough report has put Whites bang in the frame and the sooner they realise that the better.
Having said that, even an inexperienced news desk trainee with only half a brain would have realised that copy should have come with a health warning.
But MacKenzie lapped it up like any other Sarf Landan Millwall supporter would.
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I too have read the original copy from Whites.
As a former news editor on a national daily, I have to wonder why this copy made it past any news editor (and the back bench) without at least a demand of a response from the other side.
Did Whites try to contact families, community representatives or others about the allegations, however difficult the task may have been? Did the agency even try to get an official statement from South Yorkshire Police to back up the claims?
No response from the other side, as it were, appears in the four pages of original copy from Whites as reproduced in the Hillsborough documents released yesterday.
In essence, the root cause of the Sun’s disastrous front page was a lack of basic journalistic practices: no matter what you always get a response from the other side even if it’s a simple no comment or flat denial.
Then, and only then, can you weigh up the story for publication.
Since when has it been a newspaper’s role to publish one-sided arguments? Or indeed a news agency’s job to feed such copy to media outlets?
As for Whites, I don’t feel its statement goes far enough and it should apologise. It is not good enough for Whites to argue it is a mere conduit for others’ views. The agency played a role and it should acknowledge the wrong done and move on.
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Night lawyer says I’m missing the point but perhaps he’s missing mine.
I thought White’s were claiming to be shocked – two decades on – at the way The Sun had presented their allegations as fact.
How can you be shocked at something you knew 23 years ago? You peddled allegations and they presented it as The Truth.
In any event, White’s version of events is now in dispute. Others now say they did present the allegations as fact, contrary to what the ‘shocked’ agency was claiming yesterday in order to distance itself from The Truth.
Now explain to me your point again…
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Night lawyer:
‘What the clients do with copy is beyond their reach, and indeed, their concern.’
Beyond their concern?! They present as ‘The Truth’ that fans urinated and pickpocked dead fellow fans as a result of the copy they sent them and that is ‘beyond their concern?’
Hang your head in shame.
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“How can you be shocked at something you knew 23 years ago? You peddled allegations and they presented it as The Truth.”
How many people at White’s now were there 23 years ago?
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