The inquest delivered justice to the families of the Hillsborough victims so why couldn’t The Sun?

Instead of a heartfelt apology which could have made valuable steps towards healing decades-long wounds, the people of Liverpool were faced with one final injustice

Unforgiven: Liverpool fans protest in 2012 against the Hillsborough coverage in ‘The Sun’ (Getty)

Something was remiss on the newsstands this morning. Two newspaper front pages seemed out of place among their peers by failing to cover the outcome of the Hillsborough inquest on their front pages – the one that found 96 football fans were unlawfully killed 27 years ago.

One of these newspapers, The Times, later changed its front page to cover the story and issued an apology for their ‘mistake’. Another, the sister paper of The Times and arguably the most important of all the papers today remained steadfast in its decision. The Sun deemed the PM using Whatsapp to discuss Brexit as more important than a ground-breaking inquest into a 27-year institutional cover-up.

The tabloid carried the story on pages eight and nine and dedicated an editorial ‘unreservedly’ apologising for its front page coverage of the disaster in 1989, when it claimed that fans pickpocketed the dead and urinated on police officers. The newspaper, edited at the time by Kelvin MacKenzie, ran these claims from anonymous police officers. Later a police officer admitted they were false.

This was the front page that led to a boycott of the paper across Merseyside which holds to this day. Everyone in my hometown of Liverpool knows someone who lost a loved one to the disaster – and as a result, everyone always knew that the events as described in The Sun were false. Video evidence would eventually prove this by showing that it was fans who helped victims, creating makeshift stretchers out of advertising boards that surrounded the pitch, while the response from the police and ambulance service conspicuously failed those inside the stadium.

From a newspaper perspective, the editorial decision to cover an issue on its front page is one based upon the newsworthiness of a story and an editorial is the place for the paper to outline its position on the issues of the day.

Yet there is a disconnect between this journalistic tradition and how readers see front pages. Front pages are symbolic and say more about a newspaper’s identity than a short editorial column tucked away on its inside pages. The tabloid apologised 12 years ago and on its front page four years ago, but today was the day that mattered. If front pages are significant, then so is timing.

The best practice suggested by the Independent Press Standards Organisation and the Press Complaints Commission is to trail an apology on the front page leading to a longer apology inside, and this is the very least The Sun could have done. The Sun has declined to comment to The Independent why it did not take this decision.

Perhaps whatever The Sun would have done the boycott in Merseyside would have held unwavering. But that isn’t the point. This was about justice – and instead of a heartfelt apology which could have made valuable steps towards healing decades-long wounds, we were faced with one final instance of injustice.