Sun editor David Dinsmore has pledged to retain pictures of topless women on Page 3. No surprise there.

But eyebrows may well be raised in Liverpool at another of the articles in Dinsmore's paper today (though, of course, the city's continuing Sun boycott means few Merseysiders will have seen it).

It is contained in a policy spread attacking the police for a series of "disastrous failures" such as Jimmy Savile, Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson and, wait for it, Hillsborough.

The Sun's 'truth' in 1989

I kid you not. The paper ran its piece alongside a facsimile of its "The Real Truth" front page from last year rather than its despicable front page in 1989, just after the tragedy which cost 96 people their lives, headlined "The Truth".

That isn't to say that The Sun is wrong about the disgrace of the police cover-up. Similarly, its other case histories of policing scandals, including the latest Stephen Lawrence revelations, make excellent points.

But they also overlook the uncomfortable truth that The Sun itself was responsible for reporting failures in certain of those instances. Sometimes, it was the result of unquestioningly accepting what reporters were told by police officers; sometimes it was due to a knee-jerk pro-police prejudice. The end result was the smearing of innocent victims (just as with Hillsborough).

For example, following the death of Ian Tomlinson in 2009, The Sun reported: "New photos show paper seller Ian Tomlinson — unsteady on his feet through booze — being shoved aside after he blocked a police van and refused to move."

The Sun's revised truth in 2012

The picture, still up on the paper's website, shows no such thing. He happens to be walking in front of the van and it is impossible to know what the driver was saying to him. There is no shoving of any kind.

Then there is the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man killed by police officers who mistook him for a bomber in the wake of the July 2005 tube and bus atrocities.

It was The Sun that reported he was carrying a large suspicious bag into Stockwell tube station prior to the shooting. He did not have a bag.

It was The Sun that carried a report saying he had been guilty of raping a woman. This falsehood, attributed to anonymous police sources, led to de Menezes's body being exhumed, against the wishes of his family, to obtain a DNA sample. It proved he had not raped the woman.

Of course, it's fair to say the paper was often misled by the police. But that didn't stop it continually allowing itself to be misled down the years.

There are two overlapping reasons why The Sun should choose to attack the police at present, one of which is touched upon in its leading article - hostility towards the Leveson report. The other one, of course, is about the arrest of Sun journalists.

Finally, I am happy to agree with two important points made in the paper. The first, in the editorial, states: "The key to a better [police] force is more scrutiny by the media, not less." Hear, hear.

Second, in his column accompanying the feature, Trevor Kavanagh writes: "Too often, like a dog returning to its vomit, the police insist on investigating their own crimes and misdemeanours." And hear, hear to that too.

But didn't Kavanagh and The Sun say something entirely different about press dogs returning to their own vomit by insisting on investigating their own crimes by preserving press self-regulation?