Hillsborough: Merseytravel is wrong to ban the Sun from Liverpool
In Liverpool, Merseytravel wants to ban the Sun newspaper. The city’s councillors all support the company’s efforts to force vendors stop selling the Sun across the Liverpool City Region transport network. It part of a campaign, to “eradicate the paper from the city”.
It’s rooted, of course, in the Sun’s awful reporting on the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 football fans died. The paper fanned the flames of bigotry, falsely presenting the dead and injured as agents of their own fate. Liverpool fans had not “picked the pockets of victims” and “urinated” on police officers. The Sun lied to its readers. The police lied to public it serves. They turned victims into criminals.
It was not “THE TRUTH”, as the Sun claimed in its front-page headline.
But banning the paper is weak. The Society of Editors says the move was “stretching towards censorship”. No. It is censorship.
Merseytravel chairman Liam Robinson says: “Lots and lots of people in this city get offended by this newspaper, they are offended to see it on sale. People who have to sell it are offended to touch it. We are here to represent the travelling public and local people. [This motion] was backed unanimously by all political parties.”
Paul Collins, from the Total Eclipse of the S*n campaign, says the newspaper had “slandered the dead, it slandered the city with lies. It upsets decent people.”
Are you indecent if you buy the Sun, which people do, presumably? Are you morally wrong if you read the paper?
This campaign does nothing to honour the dead, the bereaved and the hurt. It seeks only revenge.
Posted: 6th, September 2016 | In: Liverpool, Reviews, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
