This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Kelvin MacKenzie managed to get himself into hot water yet again yesterday about The Sun's notorious Hillsborough football disaster coverage.

During a bad-tempered TV clash with Labour MP Chris Bryant yesterday he said: "That story came from a Liverpool news agency and a Liverpool journalist."

As I watched the above clip, which is taken from the BBC website, I anticipated that there would be more trouble.

So it has come to pass. Today, the editor of the main news agency in Liverpool, Mercury Press, described the claim as ludicrous and threatened legal action.

Chris Johnson said: "I'd bet my life that story didn't come from Liverpool... it was not something originated in this city."

Johnson was news editor of Mercury in 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives in the FA Cup tie at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield.

He says he would have seen all the stories written by his reporters that were sent on to national papers, and is adamant that no such story was sent that gave rise to The Sun's ill-judged front page, headlined "The truth."

Johnson told the Liverpool Echo: "This isn't the first time MacKenzie has said this. He tried it before in 2007 - he is trying to lay a false trail and turn the tables back on Liverpool for his very sloppy piece of journalism.

"Our lawyers have written to MacKenzie and demanded he retract this statement."

There was one moment of apparent contrition by MacKenzie during the BBC's Daily Politics show.

The host, Andrew Neil, asked if he had "any regrets or remorse" about his time as a tabloid editor, especially about Hillsborough. MacKenzie replied:

"If I could revisit Hillsborough, certainly I would do it in a different way. I would do it in the way that every other newspaper did it, which was basically that they ran the story and said 'big fury over', and I wish I had done that, yes".

Before this gets out of hand, perhaps MacKenzie might reconsider his claim about the story having come from a Liverpool agency or journalist.

I seem to recall that the false allegations about Liverpool fans being responsible for the disaster (and other disgusting behaviour) originated with the South Yorkshire police, or someone acting on their behalf (see my posting here).

These claims were certainly reported by a news agency, or news agencies, and transmitted to many papers. But I don't believe the it was a Liverpool agency.

Unless MacKenzie has evidence that has never previously emerged, I simply think - in the heat of the moment on TV - he blundered by saying it was Liverpool agency.

And let me repeat what I wrote on 17 October this year, MacKenzie's "crime" was one of presentation. He called allegations "the truth."

It was a terrible error and I think MacKenzie's problem ever since has been in trying to come to terms with his mistake.

Though he has apologised, telling a Commons select committee in 1993 about his "regret" for "a fundamental mistake", on other occasions he has sought to defend the indefensible.

He told MPs that he published because he believed what a Tory MP had told him and that the chief superintendent [David Duckenfield] had agreed with it too.

Now comes the agency claim - one he has alluded to in the past. These "reasons", however, always seem like excuses and appear to qualify his apology. They inevitably embroil him in further disputes and keep alive in the memory what he rightly says was "a fundamental mistake."

Sources: BBC/Liverpool Echo