Sorry. Forgot to add my letter to Mr Barclay outlining my objections to his article.
Re: Sunday Telegraph column 25/02/2007 title “Platini must get rid of the fences”.
Dear Mr Barclay
When reading this part of your column today, I was expecting some reference to Hillsborough as most articles since the Manchester United v Lille match have made comparisons to the tragedy in 1989.
However, your decision to include an assessment of The Sun’s notorious front page and its accompanying articles was puzzling to say the least. The contents of that particular front page and article have since been accepted by The Sun to be completely false and based wholly on sources who could not verify a single one of it’s appalling allegations.
The tone of your references to The Sun’s headlines is almost one of sympathy – as though it’s proper meaning had been misunderstood because it was, as you choose to describe it, “tastelessly simplistic”. Amazingly, you then go on to say that this completely discredited article contained “a grain of accuracy. Had the paper's infamous front-page - "Hillsborough: The Truth'' - contained a balanced analysis in which it was pointed out, at a stage of the article that paid respect to the newly deceased and their families, that 96 innocent people had been victims, to an extent, of the transgressions, past and present, of other football fans, including Liverpool fans, it would not have been an easy read. But I should not have been alone among witnesses in defending it from any public ire”.
This is outrageous. The whole point is that the article didn’t contain a balanced analysis, it didn’t pay any respect to the victims and it didn’t put the circumstances in any context relating to the previous behaviour of football supporters. Add to that the lurid headlines falsely claiming that Liverpool fans had urinated on policemen, stolen from the corpses of fellow fans and beaten up a policeman giving the kiss of life and at what point did this article contain “a grain of accuracy”?
Kelvin MacKenzie is not detested on Merseyside because his article was “tastelessly simplistic”, he’s detested because he chose, against the advice of his colleagues, to print a series of untrue and unfounded allegations that smeared the good name of all those who were killed or injured at Hillsborough for no other reason than to increase his newspaper’s circulation for one day.
There are still many people in this country, and around the world, who mistakenly consider the main cause of the Hillsborough Disaster to be drunken Liverpool fans forcing their way into the ground and crushing each other to death because that’s what they read in their newspapers. Those people are not concerned with the contents of the Taylor Report and various other reports and publications that prove the case to be otherwise – they are concerned with what their newspapers tell them and your influential column claiming that The Sun and MacKenzie’s disgusting lies contained some accuracy only helps to perpetuate these untruths.
The events in France on Wednesday evening were very serious and warrant a thorough investigation by both UEFA and the FA. However, journalists such as yourself have a responsibility to report and comment accurately on such events as your opinions often have more influence than a formal 200-page report from a governing body. I, along with many others, would be grateful that should you choose to make any further references to the Hillsborough Disaster you could please ensure that you refrain from using sources that have been thoroughly discredited.
Yours Sincerely
Darren Rogers
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