Kelvin MacKenzie
Kelvin MacKenzie was editor of the Sun during the 1980s and early 90s, and is responsible for some truly horiffic newspaper editing. Amongst his many “achievements” he is perhaps to thank for the Tories winning the 1992 election - despite all of the polls pointing towards a Labour Victory.
This is because of the Sun’s constant support for the Tories in 92 - the Sun having the famous headline on election day: “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain pelase turn out the light?” - with The Sun proudly boasting “It was the Sun wot won it” in the aftermath of the election.
MacKenzie apparently had a grip on the newsroom that only Sun owner Rupert Murdoch could overrule - to the extent where none of the staff dared to question his decision after the Hillsborough disaster, when 96 people died in a crush at a football match, to run a frontpage headlined “THE TRUTH”, claiming that Liverpool football fans stole from the dead. Despite this turning out to be bollocks, and despite circulation of The Sun dropping from over 200,000 to just 12,000 in the Liverpool area in response, MacKenzie has refused to apologise as recently as January 2007.
He was the man who established The Sun as the vile far-right bigoted organ it is today. He was the man who ran the jingoistic “GOTCHA!” headline after the sinking of the Belgrano, a retreating Argentinian warship during the Fawklands war.
In the early 80s, MacKenzie did sum up the readership of the Sun, with this rather blunt quote. It’s a good job the average Sun reader doesn’t know the meaning of the word “contempt”:
“You just don’t understand the readers, do you, eh? He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn’t want to hear about that stuff (serious news).”
Posted on May 28th, 2008 at 01:21Categories: Media Figures |
