outofbreath – Member
Well imagine how many thousands of clicks the BBC have generated for the sun.
Why? It’s paywalled so you can’t actually read it, would you rather people like that were not challenged?
you may not have heard of him but he has a long history here
MacKenzie is quoted as saying in the early 1980s (on the subject of how he perceived The Sun’s target audience):
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).[6]
although MacKenzie had actually changed the front-page of later editions to “Did 1,200 Argies drown?” after it was established that there had been a large number of Argentine casualties. MacKenzie later defended his “Gotcha” headline, saying:
Gotcha’ was mine, which I’m very proud about. The fact that the enemy were killed to my mind was a bloody good thing and I’ve never had a moment’s loss of sleep over it.[7]
Despite MacKenzie’s self-professed pride at having printed the “Gotcha” headline, Roy Greenslade has said that he had only chosen the headline prior to it becoming clear that there had been a large number of Argentine casualties resulting from the sinking of the Belgrano and that even he later became concerned that the headline may be seen as insensitive and distasteful.
MacKenzie was responsible for the “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster” front-page headline. The claims made in the accompanying article, that the comedian Freddie Starr had placed his girlfriend’s hamster on a sandwich and proceeded to eat it, turned out to be entirely untrue
Invented stories
In January 1987, MacKenzie published a totally unfounded front-page story alleging that pop singer Elton John had had sex with underage rentboys. Shortly afterwards, MacKenzie published further entirely false allegations that the singer had had the voiceboxes of his guard dogs removed because their barking kept him awake at night. MacKenzie confirmed their inaccuracy shortly after publication by sending a reporter to the singer’s house, who quickly discovered that all of his guard dogs were quite capable of barking.
MacKenzie later admitted that in retrospect he found it difficult to understand why he had believed, never mind published, the claims about the guard dogs which he later realised were self-evidently absurd. Elton John sued The Sun for libel over both these claims and was later awarded £1,000,000 in damages.[16] MacKenzie later said of Elton John
I think The Sun should have its million quid back. It hasn’t damaged him at all, has it? Libel can only have a value if there has been some kind of damage, right? Where is the damage? Where? There’s nothing wrong with him. So no, I don’t feel bad about him, not at all.[citation needed]
Plenty more here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_MacKenzie
