The Sun newspaper has received a backlash of criticism from the victims families and the British public after they shamefully kept the recent findings of the Hillsborough inquests off its front page yesterday.
The newspaper has been at the centre of an angry response by the British public after they failed to address the recent findings that proved that all 96 victims of Britain’s biggest footballing disaster were unlawfully killed due to police negligence. The string of criticism has come after the public pointed out that the newspaper ran a front page article four days after the tragedy that falsely accused Liverpool fans of pick-pocketing victims, urinating on police officers and beating an officer while he was helping a victim, under a headline that proclaimed to tell “The Truth.”
As a result the newspaper has been largely boycotted on Merseyside ever since. However the paper did finally apologise for their accusations 23 years later when they published a front page article clarifying there mistakes and misconduct entitled “The Real Truth” in which it said it was “profoundly sorry for the false reports.”
Although the newspaper has once again seemingly distanced it’s self from revealing the truth and honouring those who lost their lives and were injured that day. The paper instead decided to run a front page story that gave information about the British Prime Minister David Cameron using WhatsApp to discuss the EU, with the unlawful killing of 96 people being covered on pages 8 and 9.
The criticism of the newspapers blatant disregard to publicise the truth was led by a number of celebrities including Gary Lineker, Rory Bremner, Stephen Mangan and Krishnan Guru-Murthy with them calling it extraordinary and unjustified. Impressionist and comedian Bremner tweeted that the relegation of the story to pages eight and nine was “extraordinary”, whilst former footballer Gary Lineker called the newspaper’s actions “disgusting” but “unsurprising” before adding they should be ashamed.
The newspaper along with The Times, both owned by News Corp, were the only major British newspapers not to give front page coverage to the verdict of the two-year inquests, which cleared the fans of any fault. However The Times later added a picture of the Hillsborough victims’ families to its second edition. The newspaper claimed it “made a mistake” with the front page of its first edition today which did not include any coverage of the Hillsborough inquests, adding that “we fixed it for the second edition”.