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The S*n has been banned from attending all press conferences and football matches at Anfield.

The decision was taken on Friday, February 10, 2017.

Which begs the obvious question - why have they been actually allowed in for the past 28 years?

The answer lies in the very different media landscape which existed in 1989.

Sports departments of national newspapers and their news desks operated very independently of each other.

Independently and often competitively.

Sports writers regularly counted players and senior officials at football clubs as friends as well as contacts and went out of their way to protect those sources. They often fell foul of their news desks as a result.

A sports reporter wouldn't file a story about a player falling out of a bar drunk at 2am, usually because he'd be falling into a cab home with him.

News reporters would frequently tell their sports desk colleagues they weren't 'proper' journalists. It didn't matter to Sports Editors, because those writers delivered the best sports exclusives as a result.

People inside football clubs also treated sports writers and news reporters differently.

They trusted their daily sports contacts, but were suspicious of news reporters.

And that was the mindset at work when the S*n's newsdesk decided to run its infamous headline the week after the disaster.

Mike Ellis, The S*n's Merseyside based sports reporter at the time, was as appalled as everybody else by his newsdesk's decision - and that was recognised by the football club.

When the likeable and enormously respected Ellis retired in 2003, the UK Press Gazette reported: "Ellis was on the brink of leaving The S*n in the wake of its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster that created uproar on Merseyside, but was persuaded to stay on by Liverpool FC’s then chief executive, Peter Robinson."

They then quoted Ellis.

“I was so upset over the way it was handled that I wanted to quit, but Liverpool talked me out of it,” he said. “They said, ‘It’s not your fault, why make yourself a martyr’. “Despite the coverage, the club never withdrew their full co-operation although if they had it would have been understandable. I’m just glad I didn’t quit.”

When Graeme Souness apologised for his “almighty rick” of conducting an interview with The S*n during his time as Liverpool manager, he used Ellis' absence on a week's holiday as one of the reasons the article appeared.

He said: "The local journalist for The Sun at the time was Mike Ellis, who was away on holiday and was the one person who could have said to his newspaper’s office, you just can’t do that."

The media landscape has changed dramatically since then.

Phil Thomas took over from Ellis and inherited the goodwill and respect he had generated.

But since the Hillsborough Inquest finally and belatedly delivered a verdict of unlawful killing last year - delivering the first signs of justice at long last - people have demanded accountability.

And that reviled publication has finally been brought to account.