John Pilger on Hillsborough and Murdoch

[Section_31]

Posted this on the GF but there's a fair bit on Hillsborough, excellent read I thought.

 

New Statesman - Lies, damn lies

 

Murdoch’s papers have relentlessly assaulted common truth and decency, but their most successful war has been on journalism itself

 

I met Eddie Spearritt in the Philharmonic pub, overlooking Liverpool. It was a few years after 96 Liverpool football fans had been crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on 15 April 1989. Eddie's son, Adam, aged 14, died in his arms. The "main reason for the disaster", Lord Justice Taylor subsequently reported, was the "failure" of the police, who had herded fans into a lethal pen.

 

“As I lay in my hospital bed," Eddie said, “the hospital staff kept the Sun away from me. It's bad enough when you lose your 14-year-old son because you're treating him to a football match. Nothing can be worse than that. But since then I've had to defend him against all the rubbish printed by the Sun about everyone there being a hooligan and drinking. There was no hooliganism. During 31 days of Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry, no blame was attributed because of alcohol. Adam never touched it in his life."

 

Three days after the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, Rupert Murdoch's "favourite editor", sat down and designed the Sun front page, scribbling "THE TRUTH" in huge letters. Beneath it, he wrote three subsidiary headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims" . . . "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" . . . "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life". All of it was false; MacKenzie was banking on anti-Liverpool prejudice.

 

When sales of the Sun fell by almost 40 per cent on Merseyside, Murdoch ordered his favourite editor to feign penitence. BBC Radio 4 was chosen as his platform. The "sarf London" accent that was integral to MacKenzie's fake persona as an "ordinary punter" was now a contrite, middle-class voice that fitted Radio 4. "I made a rather serious error," said MacKenzie, who has since been back on Radio 4 in a very different mood,aggressively claiming that the Sun's treatment of Hillsborough was merely a "vehicle for others".

 

When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it.

 

Such relentless inhumanity forms the iceberg beneath the Guardian's current exposé of Murdoch's alleged payment of £1m hush money to those whose phones his News of the World reporters have criminally invaded. "A cultural Chernobyl," is how the German investigative journalist Reiner Luyken, based in London, described Murdoch's effect on British life. Of course, there is a colourful Fleet Street history of lies, damn lies, but no proprietor ever attained the infectious power of Murdoch's putrescence. To public truth and decency and freedom, he is as the dunghill

is to the blowfly. The rich and famous can usually defend themselves with expensive libel actions; but most of Murdoch's victims are people like the Hillsborough parents, who suffer without recourse.

 

The Murdoch "ethos" was demonstrated right from the beginning of his career, as Richard Neville has documented. In 1964, his Sydney tabloid, the Daily Mirror, published the diary of a 14-year-old schoolgirl under the headline, "WE HAVE SCHOOLGIRL'S ORGY DIARY". A 13-year-old boy, who was identified, was expelled from the same school. Soon afterwards, he hanged himself from his mother's clothesline. The "sex diary" was subsequently found to be fake. Soon after Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1971, a strikingly similar episode involving an adolescent diary led to the suicide of a 15-year-old girl. And Murdoch himself said, of the industrial killing of innocent men, women and children in Iraq: "There is going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better we get it done now . . ."

 

His most successful war has been on journalism itself. A leading Murdoch retainer, Andrew Neil, the Kelvin MacKenzie of the Sunday Times, conducted one of his master's most notorious smear campaigns against ITV (like the BBC, a "monopoly" standing in Murdoch's way). In 1988, the ITV company Thames Television made Death on the Rock, an investigative documentary that lifted a veil on the British secret state under Margaret Thatcher, describing how an SAS team had murdered four unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar with their hands in the air.

 

The message was clear: Thatcher was willing to use death squads. The Sunday Times and the Sun, side by side in Murdoch's razor-wired Wapping fortress, echoed Thatcher's scurrilous attacks on Thames Television and subjected the principal witness to the murders, Carmen Proetta, to a torrent of lies and personal abuse. She later won £300,000 in libel damages, and a public inquiry vindicated the programme's accuracy and integrity. This did not prevent Thames, an innovative broadcaster, from losing its licence.

 

Murdoch's most obsequious supplicants are politicians, especially New Labour. Having ensured that Murdoch pays minimal tax, and having attended the farewell party of one editor of the Sun, Gordon Brown was recently in full fawn at the wedding of another editor of the same paper. Don Corleone expects nothing less.

 

The hypocrisy, however, is almost magical. In 1995, Murdoch flew Tony and Cherie Blair first-class to Hayman Island, Australia, where the aspiring war criminal spoke about "the need for a new moral purpose in politics", which included the lifting of government regulations on the media. Murdoch shook his hand warmly. The next day the Sun commented: "Mr Blair has vision, he has purpose and he speaks our language on morality and family life."

 

The two are devout Christians, after all.

[WhiskeyJar]

Did anyone see this?

 

Sky Sports | Football News | Premier League | Liverpool | Hillsborough files to be released

 

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has agreed to release previously unseen documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

 

Johnson told the mothers of three of the 96 victims of his decision at a face-to-face meeting in London on Tuesday.

 

The release of the documents, in cooperation with South Yorkshire Police, will be co-ordinated by The Hillsborough Independent Panel, which is to be set up in the coming weeks.

 

The panel could start sifting through the paperwork as early as September.

 

The Home Office said the documents would be made available to the families before they are made public because they many contain sensitive and personal information about the last minutes of the victims' lives.

 

"Hillsborough was a terrible tragedy and the Government is committed to full disclosure of information held centrally and by local agencies in order to help provide a permanent record of documentation relating to the tragedy," a Home Office spokesman said.

 

Sensitive

"This will be done in close co-operation with South Yorkshire Police.

 

"The Home Secretary, together with Health Secretary Andy Burnham and justice minister Michael Wills, have had a useful and productive meeting with the Hillsborough Family Support Group to explore options that will enable them to have access to all relevant papers.

 

"The Government's intention is to appoint an independent panel, 'The Hillsborough Independent Panel', to oversee release of this information.

 

"Disclosure will take into account the wishes of the families to protect sensitive and personal information about the victims.

 

"With this in mind, the Government will seek to ensure that representatives of the Hillsborough families will have prior disclosure of documents on an agreed timescale before they are made more widely available.

 

"The Government will continue to work with the families to complete this work."

[halewood pete]

Murdoch and mackenzie are a pair of utter twats and this should always be remembered and reinforced.I cant stand seeing people buying the sun or reading it

[FranStan]

SO ANGRY READING THIS:

 

When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it.

[edinjapan]

Great article. He nails it. Remember seeign Adam's name written on the wall on the Kop at the Arsenal game in 1989. I was only a year older.

[Original202]

SO ANGRY READING THIS:

 

When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it.

 

Aye, it's sick. Everyone knows about the headlines, but this is rarely mentioned.

[Philbert]

Murdoch and mackenzie are a pair of utter twats and this should always be remembered and reinforced.I cant stand seeing people buying the sun or reading it

 

Nearly bought it by accident yesterday in Sheffield (of all places). Got to the counter and when I wasn't asked for my usual 45p (for The Mirror), I dropped it like a shitty stick, left it at the till and went back for a Mirror. But what disturbed me, was how similar in layout, font and colour the S*n looked to the Mirror. Is it just me, was I half asleep, or is there a sinister campaign to make it look like other papers in the hope that once it's been picked up, most people will just shrug their shoulders and complete the purchase? Wouldn't put it past them.

[Stu Monty]

*as the direct debits for sky continue to roll out*

[Nunavut Patrick]

*as the direct debits for sky continue to roll out*

 

It's been done to death mate.

 

Who among us doesn't have a Simpsons dvd, t-shirt, Duff boxers, etc.

 

 

I know you don;t believe in God, but perhaps karma.

 

A trifecta of Thatcher, Murdoch and Mackenzie passing from this realm to eternal damnation soon.

[col68]

Murdoch and mackenzie are a pair of utter twats and this should always be remembered and reinforced.I cant stand seeing people buying the sun or reading it

 

gets to me big time cant contain myself when i see it being bought or read, and bought by lots of "reds" too. no shame and no idea!

[Anubis]

A fantastic campaigner for justice for all sorts of people who have suffers at the hands of officialdom, and a journalist who was never afraid to ask the right questions.

 

RIP, John. You’ll be missed.

 

[Creator Supreme]

2 minutes ago, Anubis said:

A fantastic campaigner for justice for all sorts of people who have suffers at the hands of officialdom, and a journalist who was never afraid to ask the right questions.

 

RIP, John. You’ll be missed.

 

Bloody hell, what crap news, RIP John.

[Bjornebye]

RIP John, and thank you. YNWA

[Tj hooker]

RIP John he was one of a kind and a brilliant journalist the like of which we probably won't see again 

[torahboy]

At a time when truth in our media is endangered to the point of extinction the loss of John Pilger is patricularly painful. A great journalist.

[Jairzinho]

The BBC are such snide fucking cunts.

[VladimirIlyich]

Shame. One of only a few real journalists who was not afraid to seek the truth.

RIP.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

RIP. YNWA.

[KMD7]

Absolutely gutted. My Dad gave me his copy of John's book Heroes when I was a teenager to read and it made a huge impression on me. RIP John. 

[VladimirIlyich]

On 29/07/2009 at 16:58, FranStan said:

SO ANGRY READING THIS:

 

When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it.

I used to know Eddie,after Hillsborough,and his wife Janet. Two lovely people who never deserved the agony that they went through. Eddie left us a few years back but Janet is a lovely lady despite all. 

[Baltar]

A brilliant man, a real loss to journalism. 

[Reckoner]

He was one of my favourite people ever.

[Reckoner]

11 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

The BBC are such snide fucking cunts.

They are but why in this instance?

[Fallen Angel]

Gutted at that - wondered why it’d been bumped. 
 

I doubt we’ll see his equivalent in journalism again. RIP

[Baltar]

edit wrong thread