00:00With us, Liverpool Football Club has lodged a formal complaint with the UK's oldest and most trusted broadcaster, the BBC.
00:07A former newspaper editor was invited to talk about the issue of responsible reporting.
00:11Now, that man interviewed by the BBC was Kelvin McKenzie.
00:15This was in the wake of the resignation of the two highest bosses at the Beeb over the alleged misrepresentation of US President Donald Trump's January the 6th speech before the Capitol riot.
00:25McKenzie was editor of The Sun, tabloid newspaper at the time of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster.
00:31These are the actual images of what happened on April the 15th, 1989.
00:36I'm sad to say, as we're looking at this, we're seeing people there behind those fences being crushed to death.
00:41Ninety-six Liverpool Football Club fans were killed, crushed inside the stadium, as we see here.
00:47These images went round the world. Shock, revulsion, horror.
00:50One can only imagine what the families involved were feeling.
00:53English football had never seen such horror.
00:56And for instance, the 14-year-old cousin of Steven Gerrard, who was still a child himself, going on to become a Liverpool legend when he played for the club.
01:03His 14-year-old son was, sorry, cousin was among the dead.
01:08While I interviewed many people who lost loved ones on this terrible day that changed English football forever,
01:13a public inquiry in 2016 found that the 96 fans had been unlawfully killed.
01:17And the cover-up tried to blame them for the, well, basically, what happened to themselves,
01:23rather than looking at the mismanagement of the game by the police and by the stadium officials alike.
01:28Mr McKenzie's newspaper at the time of the disaster, 1989, led with this front page, the truth.
01:35Now, I knew at the time, because I reported firsthand on the story, that this was a catalogue of lies.
01:39But the damage in this front page was done.
01:42And you can read there some of the horrible things that the fans were accused of doing.
01:46And you can only imagine that the pain that this caused to the families involved in such tragic circumstances remains today.
01:53An open scar in Liverpool.
01:55Sales of the Sun newspaper have never recovered.
01:57So in 2016, after the public inquiry acknowledged that there'd been a cover-up and the fans basically been unlawfully killed,
02:04he said he'd been hoodwinked.
02:06James Vassana has this.
02:09It's a choice that's left some viewers baffled and angry,
02:13and led to an immediate reaction from the Liverpool Football Club.
02:18Kelvin McKenzie, the former editor of British tabloid The Sun,
02:22was invited on the news channel to discuss journalistic standards,
02:26following the resignation of the BBC's director general.
02:29A poor choice, say some, considering the former editor's past.
02:34You couldn't make it up.
02:35Bringing on Kelvin McKenzie to talk about integrity in journalism.
02:39This is the individual who published truly horrific and now completely discredited lies and smears
02:46about Hillsborough victims and survivors in The Sun after the tragedy.
02:51Kelvin McKenzie was responsible for this headline.
02:55The Sun blames Liverpool fans for the disaster that claimed the lives of 97 people at an FA Cup semi-final in 1989.
03:05Many of the victims were crushed to death and the paper published the false claims four days after the incident.
03:11A mistake that the editor later owned up to.
03:18Since then, the club and many people in the region have boycotted the tabloids,
03:22with reporters being banned from entering the grounds at Anfield.
03:27Liverpool have complained to the BBC over the corporation's decision to invite McKenzie.
03:31Director General Tim Davey stepped down on Sunday after a speech of US President Donald Trump
03:36was found to have been edited in the channel's Panorama programme,
03:40making him appear to have encouraged people to attack the capital in January 2021.
03:47We fight like hell.
03:49The president has threatened to sue the BBC for a billion dollars,
03:53should an apology and compensation not be issued by this Friday.
03:57So whether the BBC or not doctored or changed the sense of what Donald Trump was saying
04:03is a matter of discourse, and you can debate that for as long as you wish.
04:08But whether Kelvin McKenzie was the right person to get to talk about representation
04:12and get to talk about responsible reporting, of course, is another matter.
04:17And if you ask that question anywhere in Liverpool, red or blue side of the city,
04:21they'll say you're having a laugh and not a very good one.
04:24So let's bring in James Pearce, he's the journalist for The Athletic,
04:29who covers Liverpool Football Club.
04:31Grand job to have James, and great to have you here on this one.
04:33Kelvin McKenzie, give us your sense of whether he's the right person
04:37to be talking about responsible reporting.
04:40I don't think you could possibly have picked anyone worse or unsuitable
04:44to give his opinion on honesty, integrity and doing the right thing
04:50when it comes to journalism.
04:51And that's why everyone I've spoken to at Liverpool Football Club
04:54and I broke the story yesterday that they contacted the BBC
04:57to register their complaint, are so disgusted at the choice of him as a guest
05:02because I think it's bad enough having him on our TV screens at all,
05:07bearing in mind his history.
05:09But to have him on to talk about that subject matter
05:12is just absolutely, completely and utterly unsuitable.
05:17James, I apologise. I should have said you broke this story.
05:20So I've said that again.
05:21So that's everyone knows that you're the man who's brought this to light
05:23and you're talking to us and we thank you for that.
05:26McKenzie did a backtrack in 2016 after the public inquiry.
05:30So that's 1989 to 2016.
05:33All these families fighting to get the truth out there.
05:36Now, I was reporting at the time,
05:37I was a very young TV journalist at the time,
05:40I'm early 20s.
05:41And I spoke to enough people to know that what happened at Hillsborough
05:45wasn't what was being reported by The Sun at all.
05:49So, again, how on earth was this allowed to be perpetuated?
05:53He said he was hoodwinked.
05:55The inquiry said there was, you know, a cover-up in a sense.
05:58It's a matter of a public record.
05:59Please, certain officials engage in a prolonged
06:01and coordinated shift of blame from the authorities to the fans.
06:05But surely any journalist worth their salt
06:07would have been able to find out that there was a discrepancy
06:10between what the fans were saying and who had experienced
06:13and what they'd been told by the authorities.
06:16But exactly.
06:17And he wasn't interested in that
06:19because, like, he just swallowed the lies of the police,
06:23the ambulance service and the politicians
06:25as the cover-up after Hillsborough went into full swing.
06:28He swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
06:31And he was responsible for publishing that absolutely abhorrent front page
06:36that caused so much hurt.
06:38I mean, can you imagine, you know,
06:40you're dealing with the absolute tragedy of losing a loved one
06:45and then the biggest selling newspaper in the UK
06:48reports that it was actually their own fault
06:50and, you know, absolutely baseless, sickening lies
06:55that you can just, you know, as you just showed before,
06:57that front page with the truth headline,
06:59just packed full of lie after lie after lie.
07:02And that created this false narrative for so many years
07:07that the fans were responsible
07:09because then off the back of that you had all this nonsense about
07:12it was ticketless fans, it was drunken fans
07:15that had forced the gate when the reality was
07:18it was a complete and utter shambles by the authorities,
07:21the ground at Hillsborough and Sheffield in the UK
07:24wasn't fit for purpose.
07:26There was just this passing the buck
07:28and it was, you know, the son at the time under Calvin McKenzie
07:32allowed this narrative to form that the fans were responsible.
07:36And of course, I think in this day and age,
07:39it's probably hard to understand probably, you know,
07:42how something like that could happen.
07:44But this was long, long before social media,
07:47you know, newspapers were so influential
07:49in terms of convincing people
07:52what actually had happened in something.
07:54And that was why, you know,
07:56the families faced such a long, long fight
07:59to get the truth recognised.
08:02And it was only really in 2016
08:04when that new inquest, you know,
08:07basically cleared the fans of any wrongdoing
08:09that finally the lies that Calvin McKenzie had perpetuated
08:13were kind of put to bed.
08:15I and my colleagues working on this story
08:18for the local independent television company at the time.
08:22I think you'd have been a lot too young
08:24to have been involved probably still at school,
08:26I imagine, James.
08:26You're much younger than me.
08:28Yeah, I was.
08:28We spoke to the Devonsides, the Hammonds,
08:31people who were leading the campaign,
08:33people of great dignity
08:35who were seeing these lies printed in the newspaper
08:38about their loved ones
08:39who'd lost their lives so tragically
08:41at a time which was awful.
08:43And then you had Margaret Thatcher's press secretary,
08:45Sir Bernard Ingham, saying it was a bunch
08:47of tanked up scousers.
08:49That's what he said, tanked up scousers,
08:50which implies, if you don't know what tanked up,
08:52that means that they were drunk.
08:53And of course that wasn't the case.
08:55Some maybe had had a beer or two,
08:57but it wasn't a drunken mob.
08:58It was mismanagement and it was a whole sort of failure
09:03of a system that created the problem.
09:05And then you get Calvin McKenzie
09:07almost reinforcing the whole thing now,
09:09being invited on TV.
09:11A big error by the BBC.
09:12Big error.
09:14Huge, huge.
09:15I mean, of course, the BBC are coming
09:18under some serious criticism at the moment,
09:21you know, and that's obviously led
09:22to two kind of high-profile resignations
09:24in Tim Davey and the head of news,
09:27Deborah Turnis.
09:28But yeah, this was another, you know,
09:30really, really poor decision.
09:32And I think the thing that disappointed me
09:33when I wrote the story yesterday
09:35and I contacted the BBC
09:36and I explained to them the hurt that this had caused,
09:39because I spoke to a guy called Peter Scarfe,
09:42who was responsible for the Hillsborough Supporters Alliance.
09:45And he told me about just, you know,
09:48when you see someone like Calvin McKenzie
09:50given that kind of platform,
09:52it still legitimizes him.
09:53It still gives him a voice that he shouldn't have
09:56when you look at the disgraceful things
09:59that he did during his career as a newspaper editor.
10:02And let's not forget, you know,
10:03those lies in 1989 didn't cost him his job.
10:06He remained in that job at The Sun
10:07for many, many years afterwards.
10:09And when I put all of this to the BBC,
10:12they refused to give me an explanation.
10:14I said, can you just explain
10:15why you thought he was a suitable guest
10:19to talk about honesty and integrity
10:22and the importance of telling the truth in journalism?
10:25And I didn't get a response.
10:27The only response I got was to say
10:29that it would be factually wrong
10:31to say he was a live guest on BBC Breakfast on Monday
10:34because he was actually on the BBC News channel
10:37on Sunday night.
10:38But for me, that probably makes it even worse
10:40because actually his views were repeated
10:42at 7am, 8am and 9am on BBC Breakfast on Mondays.
10:47So someone didn't only think it was a good idea
10:49to get him on once,
10:50they thought it was a good idea
10:51to repeat his views over and over again,
10:53which, you know, when you look at his history,
10:56is absolutely mind-boggling.
10:58James Pearce, Liverpool Football Club reporter
11:01for The Athletic.
11:02Thank you for joining us, sir.
11:03Well done to you on breaking this story,
11:05which is incredibly important.
11:07And I think it's right that we give so much time to it.
11:10And thank you for joining us to talk it through.
11:13I'll end by saying...
11:13I'll say up the toffees,
11:14a cheeky little reference to TMI support.
11:16But great to see you.
11:18And there's only a friendly rivalry
11:19between Reds and Blues on Merseyside.
11:22And both sets of supporters, of course,
11:23still boycott The Sun newspaper to this day
11:26because of Kelvin McKenzie and his headline there.
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