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Weekly editor suspended over Hillsborough slur

A weekly newspaper editor has been suspended after a controversial front page linking the Hillsborough tragedy with football hooliganism.

As reported by HTFP last week, the Reading Chronicle’s owners were forced to issue an “unreserved apology” last week over its front page story ‘The Other Face of Football.’

It included the line: “Football hooliganism may be thought of as a relic from a previous age when gangs of denim-clad skinheads held the game to ransom and names like Hillsborough and Heysel were symbols of its ills.”

The slur caused an outcry among Hillsborough campaigners and editor Maurice O’Brien has now been suspended pending a full investigation.

This week’s edition of the Berkshire Media Group-owned weekly carries the apology on its front page.

It read: “Last week’s issue of the Reading Chronicle carried a special investigative piece entitled “The Other Face of Football”.

“This article caused great offence to Reading Football Club, Reading fans and those affected by the dreadful events of Hillsborough in 1989.

“The Chronicle wishes to apologise for any offence caused by the article and assure you that a full investigation into last week’s events is being undertaken.

“We fully accept that Reading Football Club has an exemplary record of policing their ground and Royals fans have a well-deserved reputation for excellent behaviour. Unfortunately our article and the front page in particular did not make this clear.

“The Reading Chronicle has a long and proud tradition of serving our readers and advertisers across Reading and West Berkshire. This article fell short of the diligent, responsible reporting that has been our trademark down the years.”

Berkshire Media Group managing director Keith McIntyre confirmed that Maurice had been suspended while the investigation takes place.

Maurice told the Echo last week that the newspaper had not intended to link Hillsborough with hooliganism or upset survivors.

9 comments

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  • March 27, 2014 at 1:30 pm
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    It was a dreadful over-egged story.
    And all of the backlash was entirely predictable – so obvious that it would alienate a huge chunk of readers.

    Interesting to know whether the sportsdesk were in the loop. I suspect had they been, this wouldn’t have happened.

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  • March 27, 2014 at 3:33 pm
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    I wonder if thre story has been referred to the Press Complaints Commission.

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  • March 28, 2014 at 9:01 am
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    Linking the Hillsborough tragedy to hooliganism is unforgivable.

    But linking the behaviour of Reading FC’s travelling fans to the Heysel Stadium disaster is almost as reckless.

    39 people died and 600 were injured at Hesyel in an event that shocked Europe and marked the nadir of English football.

    Have Reading’s fans actually done anything remotely similar?

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  • March 28, 2014 at 9:25 am
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    A classic example of engaging keyboard before brain. There is no excuse but this is probably another example a paper with next to no staff abandoning the checks and balances that are so vital to ensure fair, balanced and accurate journalism.

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  • March 28, 2014 at 9:59 am
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    Sorry, Voice of Reason, this can’t be attributed to under-staffing leading to a failure to check the facts.

    Before the sh*t storm arrived, the Chronicle was proud of its work.

    You only have to look at the staff Tweets urging followers to read their “investigation” to realise that.

    Remarkably, a reporter from another Reading newspaper retweeted the now notorious front page with the added comment “local journalism at its finest.” He wasn’t being ironic.

    Maybe it’s a Reading thing. Who knows?

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  • March 28, 2014 at 11:24 am
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    No excuses … it’s simply a serious lack of judgement, which should be one of the core skills of an editor. This one will be lucky to keep his chair.

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  • March 28, 2014 at 1:26 pm
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    Typo in earlier

    I don’t think it’s going to help any that the editor lists himself as “MUFC obsessive” on his twitter profile.

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  • March 31, 2014 at 8:08 am
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    For the record Bluestringer, the tweet was not from a journalist at “another Reading newspaper”, it was from a journalist at the Slough Observer, a sister paper of the Reading Chronicle.

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  • March 31, 2014 at 9:37 am
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    Even if you ignore the tasteless and inappropriate Hillsborough comparisons, this was an absolute train wreck of a piece.

    They’d clearly decided what the outcome of their “investigation” should be before they had any of the facts, then tried to shoe-horn those (fairly innocuous) statistics into the story they wanted to tell.

    They also managed to double their word count with an unnecessary slew of hyperbolic adjectives – every other word was “ugly”, “shocking”, “horrifying” and so on.

    Bet the Post are laughing their backsides off.

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