Kelvin MacKenzie
Encyclopedia
Kelvin Calder MacKenzie (born 22 October 1946, South London) is an English media
executive and former newspaper editor. He is best known for being editor of The Sun
newspaper
between 1981 and 1994, an era in which the paper was established as Britain's best selling newspaper.
. His parents were Ian and Mary Mackenzie, both journalists working for The South London Observer. When the South London Press took over their paper, Mary became Press Chief for the Tory leader of the Greater London Council, Sir Horace Cutler
. Kevin's father died in April 2004 at the age of 84. Kelvin MacKenzie left school with one O-level, in English literature
. He joined the South East London Mercury at 17, and worked on local and then national newspapers, such as the Daily Express
for the next ten years.
MacKenzie stated that he discovered early on in his career that he had little writing ability and that his talents lay in making up headlines and laying out pages.
By 1978, at the age of 32, he was Managing Editor of the New York Post
, two years after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch
, who already owned The Sun. Murdoch appointed him Sun editor in 1981 and is said to have described MacKenzie as his all-time "favourite editor".
MacKenzie is a Conservative
and a committed Thatcherite. He argues that Margaret Thatcher
is Britain's greatest post-war Prime Minister
. In 2003, he presented a documentary, Kelvin Saves the Tories, in which he proposed a low-tax, anti-BBC and cautiously pro-capital punishment
manifesto for the party. However, in February 2008, in a Sun newspaper article, MacKenzie claimed that he is now against the return of the death penalty.
It was MacKenzie who cemented the paper's image as a right-wing tabloid, not only greatly increasing its circulation and dramatically heightening its profile, but also making it infamous in the eyes of the British public for its attacks on left-wing political figures and movements and its sensationalist front-page celebrity "exposes", which frequently turned out to be misleading or outright false, with MacKenzie presiding over many of the biggest controversies in the paper's history. Critics accused the paper of exaggerating or even inventing news stories under MacKenzie (on some occasions this was proven to be the case) and of severely dumbing down
public discourse. The paper was frequently accused of promoting jingoism
, racism
, homophobia
, and intolerance.
However, MacKenzie is quoted as saying in the early 1980s (on the subject of how he perceived his target audience and how he approached journalism):
MacKenzie has also stated that he feels that his own spell as editor of The Sun had a "positively downhill impact on journalism". Numerous observers, including ex-Sun deputy editor Roy Greenslade
and left-wing journalist John Pilger
, have commented more seriously on the alleged 'Murdoch effect' – and more specifically about what they see as the negative effect of the Sun during the MacKenzie era – on British journalism, political climate, British culture and society at large.
By the mid-1980s, British comedian
s such as Jasper Carrott
would frequently bring up the subject of the stereotypical Sun reader. While the image of the "average Sun reader" may be misleading to some extent – polls have consistently shown that a majority of Sun readers claim not to take what they read in the paper seriously, and approximately the same number of Sun readers voted Labour in 1992 as voted Conservative.
Murdoch has responded to some of these arguments by saying his critics are "snobs" who want to "impose their tastes on everyone else", while MacKenzie claims the same critics are people who, if they ever had a "popular idea", would have to "go and lie down in a dark room for half an hour". Both have pointed to the huge commercial success of the Sun in the 1980s and its establishment as Britain's top-selling newspaper, claiming that they are "giving the public what they want". This conclusion is heavily disputed by critics, with Pilger pointing out that a late-1970s edition of the Daily Mirror which replaced the usual celebrity and domestic political news items with an entire issue devoted to his own front-line reporting of the genocide
in Pol Pot
's Cambodia
not only outsold the Sun on the day it was issued but became the only edition of the Daily Mirror to ever sell every single copy issued throughout the country, something never achieved by the Sun.
MacKenzie was widely criticised for his perceived cruelty to both the targets of his (sometimes false) newspaper allegations, his choice of targets frequently being not only left-wing politicians and celebrities but even previously unknown ordinary members of the public, and also his alleged cruelty to his own staff and colleagues, to which MacKenzie has since responded:
MacKenzie was responsible for the "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" front-page headline, probably the most famous in The Sun's history. 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 and an invention of the publicist
Max Clifford
. The headline is often held up as the prime example of the Sun's supposedly celebrity
obsessed, sensationalist and often inaccurate journalism.
.png)
More controversially, MacKenzie was responsible for the 4 May 1982 "Gotcha" front-page headline, which reported the contentious sinking of the Argentinian
cruiser
General Belgrano
by a British submarine
during the Falklands War
. MacKenzie was heavily condemned by some commentators who felt he was glorifying death and the headline caused a storm of controversy and protest, 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:
MacKenzie's coverage of the Falklands War was criticised by many commentators such as The Guardian
journalist and ex-Daily Mirror editor Roy Greenslade
for being jingoistic
and a glorification of war (Greenslade was working with MacKenzie on The Sun at the time). On one occasion during the conflict, The Sun published a photograph
of a missile
which had a large Sun logo printed on its side. The paper claimed they had "sponsored" the missile and that it would shortly be used to "kill Argies". The photograph also featured a topless teenage page 3 girl caressing the missile, which was perceived to be phallic imagery and resulted in criticism that The Sun was attempting to use sex
to promote and glorify war.
While The Sun was heavily criticised and even mocked for its coverage of the war in The Daily Mirror and The Guardian, The Sun responded by accusing these newspapers of treason
. The satirical
magazine Private Eye mocked and lampooned what they regarded as the paper's jingoistic coverage, most notably with the mock-Sun headline "KILL AN ARGIE, WIN A METRO
!", to which MacKenzie is said to have jokingly responded, "Why didn't I think of that?".
Despite his self-professed pride at having printed the "Gotcha" headline, Roy Greenslade claims that MacKenzie 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.
Greenslade states that MacKenzie insisted on changing the headline to "Did 1,200 Argies Die?" for later editions because of these concerns, and that he did so against the wishes of Rupert Murdoch, who allegedly demanded that the "Gotcha" headline remain for later editions despite the large number of casualties and later said of the headline, "I rather liked it". This is reportedly the only occasion that MacKenzie ever disobeyed a specific order from Murdoch.
in all of the General Election
s which were held during his time as editor, and all their policies. On the day of the 1992 election
MacKenzie used the front-page headline "If Kinnock
Wins Today, Will The Last Person To Leave Britain Please Turn Out The Lights", accompanied by a picture of Kinnock's head superimposed over a lightbulb. The article claimed that numerous celebrities would be leaving the country in the event of a Labour victory.
Although the coverage of the 1992 election remains the best remembered, there were many other vitriolic personal attacks on Labour leaders by MacKenzie's Sun during election campaigns, such as in 1983
when MacKenzie ran a front page featuring an unflattering photograph of Michael Foot
alongside the headline "Do You Really Want This Old Fool To Run Britain?", yet, a year later, the paper was staunch in its support for the re-election of Ronald Reagan
as president in the USA, who was two years older than Foot.
In 1987
MacKenzie ran an extraordinary mock-editorial entitled "Why I'm Backing Kinnock, by Joseph Stalin
".
MacKenzie also ran a story extensively quoting a respected American psychiatrist claiming that British left-wing politician Tony Benn
was "insane", with the psychiatrist discussing various aspects of Benn's supposed pathology. Benn was standing in the Chesterfield byelection
which was held on the day the article appeared. The story was discredited when the psychiatrist in question publicly denounced the article and described the false quotes attributed to him as "absurd", The Sun having apparently fabricated the entire piece. Benn won the by-election.
MacKenzie's coverage of the British miners' strike, 1984-1985
supported the police and the Thatcher government against the striking NUM miners. The paper was accused of making misleading or even outright false claims about the miners, their unions and Arthur Scargill
. MacKenzie at one point prepared a front page with the headline "Mine Führer
" and a photograph of Scargill with his arm in the air, a pose which made him look as though he was giving a Nazi salute. The print workers at The Sun, regarding it as an attempt at a cheap smear, refused to print it.
had had sex with underage rentboys. These claims were without any foundation and entirely false. Shortly after, MacKenzie published further allegations that the singer had had the voiceboxes of his guard dog
s removed because their barking kept him awake at night. Not only were these additional claims also completely untrue, but 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.
MacKenzie later said of Elton John
There were many other controversies during MacKenzie's time in charge of The Sun. MacKenzie at one point ran a story about a previously unknown member of the public who had just undergone a heart transplant operation, the story denouncing the man as a "love rat", Sun journalists having been told that he had left his wife fifteen years earlier. Aside from criticism about the story's highly questionable news value, the newspaper was furiously condemned as the story was run when the man's recovery was still in the balance.
Indeed, many commentators accused MacKenzie and his team of simply inventing many of the stories that appeared in the newspaper, as well as interviews, and in some instances this was proven to be the case, most notably when an entirely fabricated interview with the disfigured Falklands war hero Simon Weston
was published, which was criticised for "inviting readers to feel revulsion at his disfigurement". Some other notable controversies that occurred under MacKenzie include a headline describing Australian Aborigines
as "The Abo's: Brutal and Treacherous" (which was condemned as "inaccurate" and "unacceptably racist" by the Press Council) and MacKenzie's sending of photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett
, who was a patient in the hospital at the time and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy
, whether he was "dying of AIDS
". The newspaper apparently suspected Brett of being a homosexual and that his mystery illness might be AIDS, which it wasn't.
These incidents caused The Sun to become a laughing stock in some quarters and to be heavily condemned in others, but the newspaper's profile increased dramatically during MacKenzie's time as editor although sales figures dipped. On the subject of the sensationalist and sometimes inaccurate reporting which appeared in The Sun during his time as editor, MacKenzie has said:
, a deadly crush which occurred during an FA Cup
semi-final at Hillsborough football stadium
in Sheffield
claiming the lives of 96 Liverpool
fans.
The Sun printed the front-page headline "The Truth", with three sub-headings, "Some Fans Picked Pockets of Victims", "Some Fans Urinated on the Brave Cops" and "Some Fans Beat Up PC Giving Kiss Of Life". The accompanying article claimed that ticketless and drunken Liverpool F.C. fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen outside the ground. Further specific allegations were made that during the disaster itself Liverpool fans inside the stadium had stolen wallets and other items from the dead, had urinated over policemen and the bodies of dead fans, that they had beaten policemen, ambulance men and rescue workers attempting to save the lives of other fans and had sexually abused the body of a dead girl after shouting "throw her up and we'll fuck her" to policemen moving her body.
The sources for these allegations were stated to be anonymous high-ranking police officers from Sheffield Police and Irvine Patnick
, a Conservative
MP
from Sheffield
who wasn't actually present at the match. (On 11 January 2007 on BBC TV's Question Time, MacKenzie additionally claimed that one of his sources was a Liverpool news agency.) The article was accompanied by graphic photographs showing Liverpool fans, including young children, choking and suffocating as they were being crushed against the perimeter fence
s surrounding the terraces - this was widely condemned as inappropriate.
The coverage and the allegations caused intense uproar on Merseyside
(where The Sun was boycotted, with public burnings of the paper organised and many newsagents refusing to stock it at all) and widespread criticism and condemnation from many commentators. The Press Council
described the allegations unequivocally as "lies". The official government enquiry into the disaster dismissed the allegation that drunken Liverpool fans had been responsible for the disaster and concluded that inadequate crowd control and errors by the police had been the primary cause of the tragedy.
Prior to the publication of The Sun's initial article, a number of local newspapers in Yorkshire
published very similar allegations (such as The Sheffield Star and The Yorkshire Post). It has since emerged that many British national newspaper editors were offered the same story from the same sources the day before The Sun article was published but while many national newspapers printed allegations about Liverpool fans being responsible for the disaster, only MacKenzie and his counterpart at Daily Star were prepared to print the more outlandish allegations about theft and abuse of dead bodies, with many editors feeling that the claims sounded dubious. Furthermore, the other national papers which printed coverage claiming Liverpool fans to be responsible for the disaster, including The Daily Star, withdrew their allegations and apologised the day after publication, whereas The Sun did not.
In their book about the history of the Sun, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie wrote:
Murdoch for his part ordered MacKenzie to appear on BBC Radio 4
's The World This Weekend in the aftermath of the controversy to apologise. MacKenzie was quoted on the programme as saying
In 1993 he told a House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee that
In 1996, MacKenzie again discussed the matter on Radio 4 but this time claimed:
Sales of The Sun on Merseyside have never recovered, costing News International
several million pounds a year, despite a belated full page apology by the newspaper in 2004. Many newsagents on Merseyside
continue to refuse to keep the newspaper in stock.
assets. MacKenzie left within a few months.
In 1995, MacKenzie joined Mirror Group Newspapers and was appointed joint boss of their fledgling L!VE TV
British cable television
channel. The station had previously been headed by Janet Street-Porter
, who had set out to establish L!VE TV as an alternative, youth-orientated channel. She clashed with MacKenzie over program content and soon left, leaving him in sole charge.
MacKenzie later said that he would agree to indulge in a "night of passion" with Janet Street-Porter and that he would be "willing" but only if she paid him £4.7m, a figure he had arrived at after calculating how much money he would lose from "loss of reputation, the negative impact on future earnings etc."
MacKenzie took a radically different approach and was criticised for producing severely downmarket programming. MacKenzie introduced features such as nightly editions of 'Topless Darts' (featuring topless women playing darts on a beach), 'The Weather in Norwegian
' (with a young, typically blonde and bikini
-clad Scandinavia
n woman presenting weather
forecasts in both English
and Norwegian), other weather forecasts featuring dwarfs
bouncing on trampoline
s and stock exchange reports presented by Tiffany, a young female presenter who would strip naked as she read out the latest share prices. A large amount of airtime was given over to tarot card readers and astrologers. L!VE TV's best known character was the News Bunny
, a man dressed as a giant rabbit who popped up during news broadcasts to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the various news stories to indicate whether or not he found them interesting or exciting.
The station had a budget of only £2,000 an hour and attracted very little in the way of an audience, never being watched by more than an average of 200,000 viewers, but the channel was well-known because of the controversy and criticism surrounding its programming, which led to the station being labelled "Tabloid TV" and even "Sun TV" (in reference to the newspaper, some critics accusing MacKenzie of doing nothing more than creating a television version of his old newspaper). MacKenzie has been accused of taking a "shamelessly tacky approach". He eventually left the station in 1997. He later said on LIVE TV:
The station failed and closed down.
In November 1998, MacKenzie headed a consortium (TalkCo Holdings) which purchased Talk Radio
from CLT for £24.7 million. One of the financial backers was News International
, News Corporation's main UK subsidiary. In 1999 TalkCo was renamed The Wireless Group and in January 2000 Talk Radio was rebranded as TalkSport
. The Wireless Group acquired The Radio Partnership in 1999, gaining control of its nine local commercial stations. In May 2005, it was announced that the Northern Ireland
media company, UTV plc
, had made an agreed offer to buy the company, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. In June 2005, the takeover proceeded, with MacKenzie being replaced by UTV executive Scott Taunton
. The station lost listeners during Mackenzie's tenure.
In September 2005, MacKenzie took over Highbury House Communications, a magazine publishing company based in Bournemouth
and Orpington
. HHC held a number of titles mainly in the Leisure and Computing (Games) market with a 'ladette' title sitting uncomfortably in their portfolio. HHC was already suffering from massive debts when MacKenzie took the reins and despite efforts on his part to broker a life-line to save the ailing company, he had inherited a poisoned legacy. This venture also failed; Highbury and closed its doors in December 2005.
MacKenzie then spent a year as chairman of one of the UK's largest marketing and communications groups, Media Square plc. This was unsuccessful and MacKenzie left in March 2007.
MacKenzie has appeared on the BBC
's Grumpy Old Men
TV series, discussing his pet hates. In one edition he accused the BBC of having a left-wing bias and of producing out-dated and poor quality programmes and news. MacKenzie said that the reason for this was that that BBC Television Centre
is populated almost exclusively by "left-wing turds".
Despite the aforementioned criticism of the corporation, in March 2006 MacKenzie joined BBC Radio Five Live
as a presenter. He made his debut on the station over the summer, presenting a series of programmes telling the story of various scandals which have occurred at FIFA World Cup
tournaments over the years. He then presented a retrospective look at the year gone by on Christmas Day.
In May 2006, MacKenzie became a columnist for The Sun, where he again courted controversy, being accused using one of his columns to launch an attack on the people of Scotland (see below). On the subject of the columns themselves, he has said "I want to get the Lonsdale Belt
for vile and be personally rude to as many people as possible."
In August 2010, he appeared as a panellist on the ITV show 3@Three
.
. He lost the election, gaining 227 votes whereas the Conservative seat holder Glenn Dearlove won 679.
That same year, after Conservative Member of Parliament
David Davis
announced that he would resign his seat in the House of Commons in order to fight a by-election
as a protest against the Labour government's plans for 42-day detention
without charge for terrorist
suspect
s, MacKenzie announced that he was likely to contest the election on a pro-42-day detention platform, stating: "I have been associated with The Sun for 30 years. The Sun is very, very hostile to David Davis because of his 28 day stance and The Sun has always been very up for 42 days and perhaps even 420 days". Off-camera, before a BBC interview, MacKenzie referred to Hull, which the Haltemprice and Howden constituency borders, as "an absolute shocker." Asked to clarify those comments, he said it was "a joke" and that he has "never actually been to Hull".
MacKenzie subsequently decided not to run for the Haltemprice and Howden seat, stating: "The clincher for me was the money. Clearly the Sun couldn't put up the cash – so I was going to have to rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct my campaign."
MacKenzie went on to compare Merseysiders with animal rights activists. Ironically, MacKenzie is also said to have remarked,
The remarks were met with widespread incredulity and condemnation, particularly on Merseyside, where Liverpool F.C., the local Liverpool Echo
and numerous local MPs condemned MacKenzie, with Walton
MP Peter Kilfoyle
arguing that the quotes confirmed that MacKenzie was "never fit to edit a national newspaper". The Liverpool Echo called for The Sun to sack MacKenzie as a columnist. The Sun issued a statement saying that they had "already apologised for what happened and we stand by that apology." However despite reports of consternation at The Sun over MacKenzie's statements, the newspaper chose to retain him as a columnist. MacKenzie refused to comment publicly on the controversy and pulled out of a scheduled appearance on BBC TV's Question Time
later that week.
Earlier that autumn MacKenzie had already provoked controversy in Liverpool by stating in a Press Gazette interview that he had never knowingly printed any lies in The Sun and that even stories which later turned out to be untrue were still "good stories". In relation to the publishing of false or misleading reports in The Sun, MacKenzie asked "What am I supposed to feel ashamed about?" MacKenzie was not specifically referring to the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster and made no mention of the tragedy during the interview, but the Liverpool Echo published a piece reporting MacKenzie's statements and criticising the apparent lack of shame or regret over the Hillsborough coverage implied by them (and the fact that MacKenzie may still regard the misleading coverage as a "good story").
Although there was actually little reaction to the quotes on Merseyside at the time, they did draw comment from Phil Hammond, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who said: "I can't believe that even after all these years, there is no remorse or regret for the hurt he caused". It was still thought at this point however that, although MacKenzie appeared not to regret the coverage, he no longer regarded it as having any factual basis after his apparent admissions in the past that the allegations made were lies fed to him by police officers and a Tory MP.
On 6 January 2007 a protest took place at Anfield
Stadium, the home of Liverpool F.C.
, during the FA Cup
Third Round match against Arsenal F.C.
. The protest was organised by fan group Reclaim The Kop
, with the support of Liverpool F.C., and was directed towards MacKenzie personally and his continuing allegations about Hillsborough, and also towards the BBC (who were present at the stadium, broadcasting the game live on TV) for employing MacKenzie as a radio presenter and paying him with TV licence payers' (and therefore public) money. Almost 12,000 people in the Kop stand held up a mosaic which spelled out the words 'The Truth' whilst Liverpool supporters chanted "Justice for the 96" for six minutes, signifying the length of time that the Hillsborough game played on for before being abandoned. MacKenzie did not respond to the protest publicly.
On 11 January 2007 MacKenzie appeared on BBC TV's Question Time
programme, held in Kent. Towards the end of the program, MacKenzie was asked by presenter David Dimbleby
about The Suns claims about the Hillsborough disaster. MacKenzie stated that he stands by his allegation that ticketless fans were the cause of the disaster but that he does not know whether the other allegations about theft from the dead and fans urinating over victims and policemen were true. Clare Short
MP suggested MacKenzie should apologise to the bereaved families and survivors who say that his claims cause them distress and hurt but he refused, claiming that it would make no difference anyway due to the bad blood between himself and Liverpool F.C.
MacKenzie suggested that those who feel angry at him should instead direct their anger towards "someone who caused the disaster". MacKenzie was heckled by some members of the audience while Short was applauded when she repeated her suggestion that he should retract his claims and apologise, but MacKenzie remained adamant that he had nothing to apologise for.
In February 2007, Independent journalist Matthew Norman claimed that MacKenzie was considering issuing a public apology for his coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, although at the time he was "still unsure" as to whether to do so. His former colleague at The Sun Roy Greenslade
has suggested that the real reason why MacKenzie may be so hesitant to apologise and admit the inaccuracy of the coverage may be his "anti-Scouse
" bias, which Greenslade suspects makes it difficult for MacKenzie to "bring himself to say sorry to the city's people".
despite the fact that he has some Scottish ancestry - his grandfather was from Stirling
. In addition, his three names are all traditionally Scottish. Kelvin for example, is the name of one of the rivers
that runs through Glasgow
, and his brother is called Bruce, which is the name of one of the Scottish royal families.
In July 2006, MacKenzie wrote a column for the Sun newspaper referring to Scots as 'Tartan
Tosspots' and apparently rejoicing in the fact that Scotland has a lower life expectancy than the rest of the United Kingdom
. MacKenzie's column provoked a storm of protest, and was heavily condemned by numerous commentators including Scottish MPs and MSPs.
TV programme and launched another attack on Scotland. During a debate about tax
, MacKenzie claimed that:
The comments came as part of an attack on Prime Minister
Gordon Brown
whom MacKenzie said could not be trusted to manage the British economy because he was "a Scot" and a "socialist", and insisting that this was relevant to the debate. Fellow panellist Chuka Umunna
from the think tank Compass
called his comments "absolutely disgraceful", and booing and jeering were heard from the Cheltenham
studio audience. The BBC received 350 complaints and MacKenzie's comments drew widespread criticism - notably from the high-profile Scottish entrepreneur
Duncan Bannatyne
who responded on BBC Radio 5 Live
:
. They have a daughter (born 1969) and two sons (born 1972 and 1974). His elder son and his daughter (who left in January 1999) worked at Talk Radio. In 2006 they divorced on the grounds of adultery
on the part of MacKenzie. On 25 July 2008, he married Sarah McLean in Sunningdale
, Berkshire. She works for McGraw-Hill
. In the late 1990s, MacKenzie was in the news when he was caught by The Mail on Sunday
holidaying in what the paper described as a "love nest" in Barbados
with News International
secretary Joanna Duckworth. He lives in Weybridge
.
News media
The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...
executive and former newspaper editor. He is best known for being editor of The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
between 1981 and 1994, an era in which the paper was established as Britain's best selling newspaper.
Biography
MacKenzie was educated at Alleyn's SchoolAlleyn's School
Alleyn's School is an independent, fee-paying co-educational day school situated in Dulwich, south London, England. It is a registered charity and was originally part of the historic Alleyn's College of God's Gift charitable foundation, which also included James Allen's Girls' School , Dulwich...
. His parents were Ian and Mary Mackenzie, both journalists working for The South London Observer. When the South London Press took over their paper, Mary became Press Chief for the Tory leader of the Greater London Council, Sir Horace Cutler
Horace Cutler
Sir Horace Walter Cutler OBE was a British politician and Leader of the Greater London Council from 1977 to 1981. He was noted for his showmanship and flair for publicity, although sceptical of the merits of the authority he was in charge of.-Origin:Cutler was born in Stoke Newington, London into...
. Kevin's father died in April 2004 at the age of 84. Kelvin MacKenzie left school with one O-level, in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
. He joined the South East London Mercury at 17, and worked on local and then national newspapers, such as the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
for the next ten years.
MacKenzie stated that he discovered early on in his career that he had little writing ability and that his talents lay in making up headlines and laying out pages.
By 1978, at the age of 32, he was Managing Editor of the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, two years after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, who already owned The Sun. Murdoch appointed him Sun editor in 1981 and is said to have described MacKenzie as his all-time "favourite editor".
MacKenzie is a Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
and a committed Thatcherite. He argues that Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
is Britain's greatest post-war Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
. In 2003, he presented a documentary, Kelvin Saves the Tories, in which he proposed a low-tax, anti-BBC and cautiously pro-capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
manifesto for the party. However, in February 2008, in a Sun newspaper article, MacKenzie claimed that he is now against the return of the death penalty.
Outlook
While it was in 1978 that The Sun initially overtook the Daily Mirror in terms of circulation, it was during MacKenzie's spell as editor that The Sun firmly established itself as the biggest selling newspaper in Britain.It was MacKenzie who cemented the paper's image as a right-wing tabloid, not only greatly increasing its circulation and dramatically heightening its profile, but also making it infamous in the eyes of the British public for its attacks on left-wing political figures and movements and its sensationalist front-page celebrity "exposes", which frequently turned out to be misleading or outright false, with MacKenzie presiding over many of the biggest controversies in the paper's history. Critics accused the paper of exaggerating or even inventing news stories under MacKenzie (on some occasions this was proven to be the case) and of severely dumbing down
Dumbing down
Dumbing down is a pejorative term for a perceived trend to lower the intellectual content of literature, education, news, and other aspects of culture...
public discourse. The paper was frequently accused of promoting jingoism
Jingoism
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests...
, racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, and intolerance.
However, MacKenzie is quoted as saying in the early 1980s (on the subject of how he perceived his target audience and how he approached journalism):
MacKenzie has also stated that he feels that his own spell as editor of The Sun had a "positively downhill impact on journalism". Numerous observers, including ex-Sun deputy editor Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism at City University London and has been a media commentator since 1992, most notably for The Guardian....
and left-wing journalist John Pilger
John Pilger
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US....
, have commented more seriously on the alleged 'Murdoch effect' – and more specifically about what they see as the negative effect of the Sun during the MacKenzie era – on British journalism, political climate, British culture and society at large.
By the mid-1980s, British comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
s such as Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott OBE is a British comedian, actor, television presenter and personality.-Early life:...
would frequently bring up the subject of the stereotypical Sun reader. While the image of the "average Sun reader" may be misleading to some extent – polls have consistently shown that a majority of Sun readers claim not to take what they read in the paper seriously, and approximately the same number of Sun readers voted Labour in 1992 as voted Conservative.
Murdoch has responded to some of these arguments by saying his critics are "snobs" who want to "impose their tastes on everyone else", while MacKenzie claims the same critics are people who, if they ever had a "popular idea", would have to "go and lie down in a dark room for half an hour". Both have pointed to the huge commercial success of the Sun in the 1980s and its establishment as Britain's top-selling newspaper, claiming that they are "giving the public what they want". This conclusion is heavily disputed by critics, with Pilger pointing out that a late-1970s edition of the Daily Mirror which replaced the usual celebrity and domestic political news items with an entire issue devoted to his own front-line reporting of the genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
in Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
's Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
not only outsold the Sun on the day it was issued but became the only edition of the Daily Mirror to ever sell every single copy issued throughout the country, something never achieved by the Sun.
MacKenzie was widely criticised for his perceived cruelty to both the targets of his (sometimes false) newspaper allegations, his choice of targets frequently being not only left-wing politicians and celebrities but even previously unknown ordinary members of the public, and also his alleged cruelty to his own staff and colleagues, to which MacKenzie has since responded:
Notorious headlines
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
Freddie Starr
Freddie Starr
Freddie Starr is an English comedian who became famous in the early 1970s. He is also an impressionist and singer, with a chart album After the Laughter and UK Top 10 single, "It's You", in March 1974 to his credit.-Early career:Under his real name, he appeared as a teenager in the film Violent...
had placed his girlfriend's hamster
Hamster
Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae. The subfamily contains about 25 species, classified in six or seven genera....
on a sandwich and proceeded to eat it, turned out to be entirely untrue and an invention of the publicist
Publicist
A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...
Max Clifford
Max Clifford
Maxwell Frank Clifford is an English publicist, considered the highest-profile and best-known publicist in the United Kingdom...
. The headline is often held up as the prime example of the Sun's supposedly celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
obsessed, sensationalist and often inaccurate journalism.
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
cruiser
Cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...
General Belgrano
ARA General Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy light cruiser in service from 1951 until 1982. Formerly the , she saw action in the Pacific theater of World War II before being sold to Argentina. After almost 31 years of service, she was sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine ...
by a British submarine
HMS Conqueror (S48)
HMS Conqueror was a nuclear-powered fleet submarine that served in the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1990. She was built by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead...
during the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
. MacKenzie was heavily condemned by some commentators who felt he was glorifying death and the headline caused a storm of controversy and protest, 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:
MacKenzie's coverage of the Falklands War was criticised by many commentators such as The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
journalist and ex-Daily Mirror editor Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism at City University London and has been a media commentator since 1992, most notably for The Guardian....
for being jingoistic
Jingoism
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests...
and a glorification of war (Greenslade was working with MacKenzie on The Sun at the time). On one occasion during the conflict, The Sun published a photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
of a missile
Missile
Though a missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a self-propelled guided weapon system.-Etymology:The word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send"...
which had a large Sun logo printed on its side. The paper claimed they had "sponsored" the missile and that it would shortly be used to "kill Argies". The photograph also featured a topless teenage page 3 girl caressing the missile, which was perceived to be phallic imagery and resulted in criticism that The Sun was attempting to use sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
to promote and glorify war.
While The Sun was heavily criticised and even mocked for its coverage of the war in The Daily Mirror and The Guardian, The Sun responded by accusing these newspapers of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
. The satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
magazine Private Eye mocked and lampooned what they regarded as the paper's jingoistic coverage, most notably with the mock-Sun headline "KILL AN ARGIE, WIN A METRO
Rover Metro
The Metro is a supermini car that was produced by the Austin Rover Group division of British Leyland and its successors. It was launched in 1980 as the Austin miniMetro. It was intended to complement the Mini, and was developed under the codename LC8....
!", to which MacKenzie is said to have jokingly responded, "Why didn't I think of that?".
Despite his self-professed pride at having printed the "Gotcha" headline, Roy Greenslade claims that MacKenzie 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.
Greenslade states that MacKenzie insisted on changing the headline to "Did 1,200 Argies Die?" for later editions because of these concerns, and that he did so against the wishes of Rupert Murdoch, who allegedly demanded that the "Gotcha" headline remain for later editions despite the large number of casualties and later said of the headline, "I rather liked it". This is reportedly the only occasion that MacKenzie ever disobeyed a specific order from Murdoch.
The Sun's politics
MacKenzie's Sun strongly supported the Conservative PartyConservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
in all of the General Election
General election
In a parliamentary political system, a general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen. The term is usually used to refer to elections held for a nation's primary legislative body, as distinguished from by-elections and local elections.The term...
s which were held during his time as editor, and all their policies. On the day of the 1992 election
United Kingdom general election, 1992
The United Kingdom general election of 1992 was held on 9 April 1992, and was the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party. This election result was one of the biggest surprises in 20th Century politics, as polling leading up to the day of the election showed Labour under leader Neil...
MacKenzie used the front-page headline "If Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
Wins Today, Will The Last Person To Leave Britain Please Turn Out The Lights", accompanied by a picture of Kinnock's head superimposed over a lightbulb. The article claimed that numerous celebrities would be leaving the country in the event of a Labour victory.
Although the coverage of the 1992 election remains the best remembered, there were many other vitriolic personal attacks on Labour leaders by MacKenzie's Sun during election campaigns, such as in 1983
United Kingdom general election, 1983
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...
when MacKenzie ran a front page featuring an unflattering photograph of Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
alongside the headline "Do You Really Want This Old Fool To Run Britain?", yet, a year later, the paper was staunch in its support for the re-election of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
as president in the USA, who was two years older than Foot.
In 1987
United Kingdom general election, 1987
The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the British House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive election victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the 2nd...
MacKenzie ran an extraordinary mock-editorial entitled "Why I'm Backing Kinnock, by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
".
MacKenzie also ran a story extensively quoting a respected American psychiatrist claiming that British left-wing politician Tony Benn
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...
was "insane", with the psychiatrist discussing various aspects of Benn's supposed pathology. Benn was standing in the Chesterfield byelection
Chesterfield by-election, 1984
The Chesterfield by-election, 1984 was held on 1 March 1984 for a seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom to represent Chesterfield in Derbyshire...
which was held on the day the article appeared. The story was discredited when the psychiatrist in question publicly denounced the article and described the false quotes attributed to him as "absurd", The Sun having apparently fabricated the entire piece. Benn won the by-election.
MacKenzie's coverage of the British miners' strike, 1984-1985
UK miners' strike (1984–1985)
The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trades union movement...
supported the police and the Thatcher government against the striking NUM miners. The paper was accused of making misleading or even outright false claims about the miners, their unions and Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill is a British politician who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1982 to 2002, leading the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history...
. MacKenzie at one point prepared a front page with the headline "Mine Führer
Führer
Führer , alternatively spelled Fuehrer in both English and German when the umlaut is not available, is a German title meaning leader or guide now most associated with Adolf Hitler, who modelled it on Benito Mussolini's title il Duce, as well as with Georg von Schönerer, whose followers also...
" and a photograph of Scargill with his arm in the air, a pose which made him look as though he was giving a Nazi salute. The print workers at The Sun, regarding it as an attempt at a cheap smear, refused to print it.
Invented stories
In January 1987, MacKenzie published a front-page story alleging that pop singer Elton JohnElton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
had had sex with underage rentboys. These claims were without any foundation and entirely false. Shortly after, MacKenzie published further allegations that the singer had had the voiceboxes of his guard dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
s removed because their barking kept him awake at night. Not only were these additional claims also completely untrue, but 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.
MacKenzie later said of Elton John
There were many other controversies during MacKenzie's time in charge of The Sun. MacKenzie at one point ran a story about a previously unknown member of the public who had just undergone a heart transplant operation, the story denouncing the man as a "love rat", Sun journalists having been told that he had left his wife fifteen years earlier. Aside from criticism about the story's highly questionable news value, the newspaper was furiously condemned as the story was run when the man's recovery was still in the balance.
Indeed, many commentators accused MacKenzie and his team of simply inventing many of the stories that appeared in the newspaper, as well as interviews, and in some instances this was proven to be the case, most notably when an entirely fabricated interview with the disfigured Falklands war hero Simon Weston
Simon Weston
Simon Weston OBE is a former British Army soldier who became well known throughout the United Kingdom for his recovery and charity work after suffering severe burn injuries during the Falklands War.-Early life:...
was published, which was criticised for "inviting readers to feel revulsion at his disfigurement". Some other notable controversies that occurred under MacKenzie include a headline describing Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
as "The Abo's: Brutal and Treacherous" (which was condemned as "inaccurate" and "unacceptably racist" by the Press Council) and MacKenzie's sending of photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett , born Peter Jeremy William Huggins, was an English actor, most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in four Granada TV series.-Early life:...
, who was a patient in the hospital at the time and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy
Cardiomyopathy
Cardiomyopathy, which literally means "heart muscle disease," is the deterioration of the function of the myocardium for any reason. People with cardiomyopathy are often at risk of arrhythmia or sudden cardiac death or both. Cardiomyopathy can often go undetected, making it especially dangerous to...
, whether he was "dying of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
". The newspaper apparently suspected Brett of being a homosexual and that his mystery illness might be AIDS, which it wasn't.
These incidents caused The Sun to become a laughing stock in some quarters and to be heavily condemned in others, but the newspaper's profile increased dramatically during MacKenzie's time as editor although sales figures dipped. On the subject of the sensationalist and sometimes inaccurate reporting which appeared in The Sun during his time as editor, MacKenzie has said:
Coverage of the Hillsborough disaster
In April 1989, the single biggest controversy during MacKenzie's reign occurred, later described in a Sun editorial in 2004 as "the most terrible mistake in our history", during the aftermath of the Hillsborough disasterHillsborough disaster
The Hillsborough disaster was a human crush that occurred on 15 April 1989 at Hillsborough, a football stadium, the home of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. in Sheffield, England, resulting in the deaths of 96 people, and 766 being injured, all fans of Liverpool F.C....
, a deadly crush which occurred during an FA Cup
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...
semi-final at Hillsborough football stadium
Hillsborough Stadium
Hillsborough Stadium is the home of Sheffield Wednesday football club, Sheffield, England. Football has been played at the ground since it was opened on 2 September 1899, when Wednesday moved from their original ground at Olive Grove. Today it is a 39,812 capacity all-seater stadium, making it the...
in Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
claiming the lives of 96 Liverpool
Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...
fans.
The Sun printed the front-page headline "The Truth", with three sub-headings, "Some Fans Picked Pockets of Victims", "Some Fans Urinated on the Brave Cops" and "Some Fans Beat Up PC Giving Kiss Of Life". The accompanying article claimed that ticketless and drunken Liverpool F.C. fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen outside the ground. Further specific allegations were made that during the disaster itself Liverpool fans inside the stadium had stolen wallets and other items from the dead, had urinated over policemen and the bodies of dead fans, that they had beaten policemen, ambulance men and rescue workers attempting to save the lives of other fans and had sexually abused the body of a dead girl after shouting "throw her up and we'll fuck her" to policemen moving her body.
The sources for these allegations were stated to be anonymous high-ranking police officers from Sheffield Police and Irvine Patnick
Irvine Patnick
Sir Cyril Irvine Patnick, known as Irvine Patnick OBE is a British businessman and former Conservative Party politician....
, a Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
from Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
who wasn't actually present at the match. (On 11 January 2007 on BBC TV's Question Time, MacKenzie additionally claimed that one of his sources was a Liverpool news agency.) The article was accompanied by graphic photographs showing Liverpool fans, including young children, choking and suffocating as they were being crushed against the perimeter fence
Perimeter fence
A perimeter fence is a structure that circles the perimeter of an area to prevent access. These fences are frequently made out of single vertical metal bars connected at the top and bottom with a horizontal bar. They often have spikes on the top to prevent climbing. Residential perimeter fences are...
s surrounding the terraces - this was widely condemned as inappropriate.
The coverage and the allegations caused intense uproar on Merseyside
Merseyside
Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...
(where The Sun was boycotted, with public burnings of the paper organised and many newsagents refusing to stock it at all) and widespread criticism and condemnation from many commentators. The Press Council
Press Complaints Commission
The Press Complaints Commission is a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC is funded by the annual levy it charges newspapers and magazines...
described the allegations unequivocally as "lies". The official government enquiry into the disaster dismissed the allegation that drunken Liverpool fans had been responsible for the disaster and concluded that inadequate crowd control and errors by the police had been the primary cause of the tragedy.
Prior to the publication of The Sun's initial article, a number of local newspapers in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
published very similar allegations (such as The Sheffield Star and The Yorkshire Post). It has since emerged that many British national newspaper editors were offered the same story from the same sources the day before The Sun article was published but while many national newspapers printed allegations about Liverpool fans being responsible for the disaster, only MacKenzie and his counterpart at Daily Star were prepared to print the more outlandish allegations about theft and abuse of dead bodies, with many editors feeling that the claims sounded dubious. Furthermore, the other national papers which printed coverage claiming Liverpool fans to be responsible for the disaster, including The Daily Star, withdrew their allegations and apologised the day after publication, whereas The Sun did not.
In their book about the history of the Sun, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie wrote:
Murdoch for his part ordered MacKenzie to appear on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's The World This Weekend in the aftermath of the controversy to apologise. MacKenzie was quoted on the programme as saying
In 1993 he told a House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee that
In 1996, MacKenzie again discussed the matter on Radio 4 but this time claimed:
Sales of The Sun on Merseyside have never recovered, costing News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
several million pounds a year, despite a belated full page apology by the newspaper in 2004. Many newsagents on Merseyside
Merseyside
Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...
continue to refuse to keep the newspaper in stock.
After leaving The Sun
In January 1994, MacKenzie moved to BSkyB, another of Murdoch's News CorporationNews Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
assets. MacKenzie left within a few months.
In 1995, MacKenzie joined Mirror Group Newspapers and was appointed joint boss of their fledgling L!VE TV
L!VE TV
L!VE TV was a British television station that was operated by MGN on cable television from 15 August 1995 - 31 October 1999. It was later revived for Sky Digital from 2003...
British cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
channel. The station had previously been headed by Janet Street-Porter
Janet Street-Porter
Janet Street-Porter is a British media personality, journalist and television presenter. She was editor for two years of The Independent on Sunday. She relinquished the job to become editor-at-large in 2002...
, who had set out to establish L!VE TV as an alternative, youth-orientated channel. She clashed with MacKenzie over program content and soon left, leaving him in sole charge.
MacKenzie later said that he would agree to indulge in a "night of passion" with Janet Street-Porter and that he would be "willing" but only if she paid him £4.7m, a figure he had arrived at after calculating how much money he would lose from "loss of reputation, the negative impact on future earnings etc."
MacKenzie took a radically different approach and was criticised for producing severely downmarket programming. MacKenzie introduced features such as nightly editions of 'Topless Darts' (featuring topless women playing darts on a beach), 'The Weather in Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
' (with a young, typically blonde and bikini
Bikini
The bikini is typically a women's two-piece swimsuit. One part of the attire covers the breasts and the other part covers the crotch and part of or the entire buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two. Merriam–Webster describes the bikini as "a woman's scanty two-piece bathing suit" or "a...
-clad Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n woman presenting weather
Weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...
forecasts in both English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Norwegian), other weather forecasts featuring dwarfs
Dwarfism
Dwarfism is short stature resulting from a medical condition. It is sometimes defined as an adult height of less than 4 feet 10 inches , although this definition is problematic because short stature in itself is not a disorder....
bouncing on trampoline
Trampoline
A trampoline is a device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric stretched over a steel frame using many coiled springs. People bounce on trampolines for recreational and competitive purposes....
s and stock exchange reports presented by Tiffany, a young female presenter who would strip naked as she read out the latest share prices. A large amount of airtime was given over to tarot card readers and astrologers. L!VE TV's best known character was the News Bunny
News Bunny
News Bunny was station mascot, and creation of the short-lived UK TV Station L!VE TV, under its publicity-seeking boss Kelvin MacKenzie.The basic premise was that during news bulletins, an extra dressed as a giant rabbit would stand behind the news presenter, and mime actions related to the news...
, a man dressed as a giant rabbit who popped up during news broadcasts to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the various news stories to indicate whether or not he found them interesting or exciting.
The station had a budget of only £2,000 an hour and attracted very little in the way of an audience, never being watched by more than an average of 200,000 viewers, but the channel was well-known because of the controversy and criticism surrounding its programming, which led to the station being labelled "Tabloid TV" and even "Sun TV" (in reference to the newspaper, some critics accusing MacKenzie of doing nothing more than creating a television version of his old newspaper). MacKenzie has been accused of taking a "shamelessly tacky approach". He eventually left the station in 1997. He later said on LIVE TV:
The station failed and closed down.
In November 1998, MacKenzie headed a consortium (TalkCo Holdings) which purchased Talk Radio
TalkSPORT
Talksport , owned by UTV radio, is one of the United Kingdom's three terrestrial analogue Independent National Radio broadcasters, offering a sports and talk radio service broadcast from London to the United Kingdom....
from CLT for £24.7 million. One of the financial backers was News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
, News Corporation's main UK subsidiary. In 1999 TalkCo was renamed The Wireless Group and in January 2000 Talk Radio was rebranded as TalkSport
TalkSPORT
Talksport , owned by UTV radio, is one of the United Kingdom's three terrestrial analogue Independent National Radio broadcasters, offering a sports and talk radio service broadcast from London to the United Kingdom....
. The Wireless Group acquired The Radio Partnership in 1999, gaining control of its nine local commercial stations. In May 2005, it was announced that the Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
media company, UTV plc
UTV plc
UTV Media is a broadcasting and New Media company based in Belfast in Northern Ireland. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. UTV Media's main operation is the ITV franchise for Northern Ireland, and it is also the owner of UTV Radio, which operates the UK Independent National Radio...
, had made an agreed offer to buy the company, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. In June 2005, the takeover proceeded, with MacKenzie being replaced by UTV executive Scott Taunton
Scott Taunton
Scott Taunton is an Australian businessman. Born in Canberra, he was general manager of DNA Internet until March 2000, when the company was acquired by Northern Ireland-based broadcaster UTV Media. He was appointed Managing Director of UTV Internet, which became one of the largest service providers...
. The station lost listeners during Mackenzie's tenure.
In September 2005, MacKenzie took over Highbury House Communications, a magazine publishing company based in Bournemouth
Bournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
and Orpington
Orpington
Orpington is a suburban town and electoral ward in the London Borough of Bromley. It forms the southeastern edge of London's urban sprawl and is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
. HHC held a number of titles mainly in the Leisure and Computing (Games) market with a 'ladette' title sitting uncomfortably in their portfolio. HHC was already suffering from massive debts when MacKenzie took the reins and despite efforts on his part to broker a life-line to save the ailing company, he had inherited a poisoned legacy. This venture also failed; Highbury and closed its doors in December 2005.
MacKenzie then spent a year as chairman of one of the UK's largest marketing and communications groups, Media Square plc. This was unsuccessful and MacKenzie left in March 2007.
MacKenzie has appeared on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Grumpy Old Men
Grumpy Old Men (TV series)
Grumpy Old Men is a conversational-style television programme on BBC2 which debuted in 2003, The first run of four programmes was repeated several times before a second series, also of four episodes, was shown in 2004. A third series aired in April 2006. There were also 2003 & 2004 Christmas...
TV series, discussing his pet hates. In one edition he accused the BBC of having a left-wing bias and of producing out-dated and poor quality programmes and news. MacKenzie said that the reason for this was that that BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
is populated almost exclusively by "left-wing turds".
Despite the aforementioned criticism of the corporation, in March 2006 MacKenzie joined BBC Radio Five Live
BBC Radio Five Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
as a presenter. He made his debut on the station over the summer, presenting a series of programmes telling the story of various scandals which have occurred at FIFA World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...
tournaments over the years. He then presented a retrospective look at the year gone by on Christmas Day.
In May 2006, MacKenzie became a columnist for The Sun, where he again courted controversy, being accused using one of his columns to launch an attack on the people of Scotland (see below). On the subject of the columns themselves, he has said "I want to get the Lonsdale Belt
Lonsdale belt
The Lonsdale Belt was a boxing prize introduced by Hugh Lowther, 5th Earl of Lonsdale, to be awarded to British boxing champions. It is still awarded to British champions today.-National Sporting Club:...
for vile and be personally rude to as many people as possible."
In August 2010, he appeared as a panellist on the ITV show 3@Three
3@three
3@Three is a topical TV live debate show on ITV. In the programme three topics are discussed each day at three o'clock by three rotating panellists. The first series of ten episodes aired on Monday-Friday between 2 August and 13 August 2010...
.
Political ambitions
In May 2008, MacKenzie stood for election as a local councillor in ElmbridgeElmbridge
Elmbridge is a local government district and borough in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Esher. The district has only one civil parish, which is Claygate...
. He lost the election, gaining 227 votes whereas the Conservative seat holder Glenn Dearlove won 679.
That same year, after Conservative Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
David Davis
David Davis (British politician)
David Michael Davis is a British Conservative Party politician who is the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden...
announced that he would resign his seat in the House of Commons in order to fight a by-election
Haltemprice and Howden by-election, 2008
The 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election was a by-election held in the United Kingdom on 10 July 2008 to elect a new Member of Parliament for constituency of Haltemprice and Howden...
as a protest against the Labour government's plans for 42-day detention
Detention of suspects
The detention of suspects is the process of keeping a person who has been arrested in a police-cell, remand prison or other detention centre before trial or sentencing. One criticism of pretrial detention is that eventual acquittal can be a somewhat hollow victory, in that there is no way to...
without charge for terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
suspect
Suspect
In the parlance of criminal justice, a suspect is a known person suspected of committing a crime.Police and reporters often incorrectly use the word suspect when referring to the...
s, MacKenzie announced that he was likely to contest the election on a pro-42-day detention platform, stating: "I have been associated with The Sun for 30 years. The Sun is very, very hostile to David Davis because of his 28 day stance and The Sun has always been very up for 42 days and perhaps even 420 days". Off-camera, before a BBC interview, MacKenzie referred to Hull, which the Haltemprice and Howden constituency borders, as "an absolute shocker." Asked to clarify those comments, he said it was "a joke" and that he has "never actually been to Hull".
MacKenzie subsequently decided not to run for the Haltemprice and Howden seat, stating: "The clincher for me was the money. Clearly the Sun couldn't put up the cash – so I was going to have to rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct my campaign."
Hillsborough controversy reignited
During an after-dinner speech to Mincoffs Solicitors LLP (a Newcastle-based law firm) on 30 November 2006, MacKenzie is reported to have said of his coverage of the Hillsborough disaster:MacKenzie went on to compare Merseysiders with animal rights activists. Ironically, MacKenzie is also said to have remarked,
The remarks were met with widespread incredulity and condemnation, particularly on Merseyside, where Liverpool F.C., the local Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
The Liverpool Echo is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Saturday, and is Liverpool's evening newspaper while its sister paper, the Liverpool Daily Post, is the morning paper...
and numerous local MPs condemned MacKenzie, with Walton
Liverpool Walton (UK Parliament constituency)
Liverpool, Walton is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election.-Boundaries:...
MP Peter Kilfoyle
Peter Kilfoyle
Peter Kilfoyle is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1991 to 2010.-Early life:...
arguing that the quotes confirmed that MacKenzie was "never fit to edit a national newspaper". The Liverpool Echo called for The Sun to sack MacKenzie as a columnist. The Sun issued a statement saying that they had "already apologised for what happened and we stand by that apology." However despite reports of consternation at The Sun over MacKenzie's statements, the newspaper chose to retain him as a columnist. MacKenzie refused to comment publicly on the controversy and pulled out of a scheduled appearance on BBC TV's Question Time
Question Time
Question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers , which they are obliged to answer. It usually occurs daily while parliament is sitting, though it can be cancelled in exceptional circumstances...
later that week.
Earlier that autumn MacKenzie had already provoked controversy in Liverpool by stating in a Press Gazette interview that he had never knowingly printed any lies in The Sun and that even stories which later turned out to be untrue were still "good stories". In relation to the publishing of false or misleading reports in The Sun, MacKenzie asked "What am I supposed to feel ashamed about?" MacKenzie was not specifically referring to the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster and made no mention of the tragedy during the interview, but the Liverpool Echo published a piece reporting MacKenzie's statements and criticising the apparent lack of shame or regret over the Hillsborough coverage implied by them (and the fact that MacKenzie may still regard the misleading coverage as a "good story").
Although there was actually little reaction to the quotes on Merseyside at the time, they did draw comment from Phil Hammond, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who said: "I can't believe that even after all these years, there is no remorse or regret for the hurt he caused". It was still thought at this point however that, although MacKenzie appeared not to regret the coverage, he no longer regarded it as having any factual basis after his apparent admissions in the past that the allegations made were lies fed to him by police officers and a Tory MP.
On 6 January 2007 a protest took place at Anfield
Anfield
Anfield is an association football stadium in the district of Anfield, Liverpool, England, with a seating capacity of 45,522. It has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since their formation in 1892 and was originally the home of Everton F.C. from 1884 to 1892, before they moved to Goodison Park...
Stadium, the home of Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...
, during the FA Cup
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...
Third Round match against Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...
. The protest was organised by fan group Reclaim The Kop
Reclaim The Kop
Reclaim The Kop, often referred to as RTK, is a campaign among fans of Liverpool Football Club to restore the matchday atmosphere within The Kop specifically, and Anfield more generally...
, with the support of Liverpool F.C., and was directed towards MacKenzie personally and his continuing allegations about Hillsborough, and also towards the BBC (who were present at the stadium, broadcasting the game live on TV) for employing MacKenzie as a radio presenter and paying him with TV licence payers' (and therefore public) money. Almost 12,000 people in the Kop stand held up a mosaic which spelled out the words 'The Truth' whilst Liverpool supporters chanted "Justice for the 96" for six minutes, signifying the length of time that the Hillsborough game played on for before being abandoned. MacKenzie did not respond to the protest publicly.
On 11 January 2007 MacKenzie appeared on BBC TV's Question Time
Question Time
Question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers , which they are obliged to answer. It usually occurs daily while parliament is sitting, though it can be cancelled in exceptional circumstances...
programme, held in Kent. Towards the end of the program, MacKenzie was asked by presenter David Dimbleby
David Dimbleby
David Dimbleby is a British BBC TV commentator and a presenter of current affairs and political programmes, most notably the BBC's flagship political show Question Time, and more recently, art, architectural history and history series...
about The Suns claims about the Hillsborough disaster. MacKenzie stated that he stands by his allegation that ticketless fans were the cause of the disaster but that he does not know whether the other allegations about theft from the dead and fans urinating over victims and policemen were true. Clare Short
Clare Short
Clare Short is a British politician, and a member of the Labour Party. She was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010; for most of this period she was a Labour Party MP, but she resigned the party whip in 2006 and served the remainder of her term as an Independent. She...
MP suggested MacKenzie should apologise to the bereaved families and survivors who say that his claims cause them distress and hurt but he refused, claiming that it would make no difference anyway due to the bad blood between himself and Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...
MacKenzie suggested that those who feel angry at him should instead direct their anger towards "someone who caused the disaster". MacKenzie was heckled by some members of the audience while Short was applauded when she repeated her suggestion that he should retract his claims and apologise, but MacKenzie remained adamant that he had nothing to apologise for.
In February 2007, Independent journalist Matthew Norman claimed that MacKenzie was considering issuing a public apology for his coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, although at the time he was "still unsure" as to whether to do so. His former colleague at The Sun Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade
Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism at City University London and has been a media commentator since 1992, most notably for The Guardian....
has suggested that the real reason why MacKenzie may be so hesitant to apologise and admit the inaccuracy of the coverage may be his "anti-Scouse
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
" bias, which Greenslade suspects makes it difficult for MacKenzie to "bring himself to say sorry to the city's people".
Attacks on Scotland
MacKenzie has courted further controversy recently by making a series of attacks on the people of ScotlandScotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
despite the fact that he has some Scottish ancestry - his grandfather was from Stirling
Stirling
Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
. In addition, his three names are all traditionally Scottish. Kelvin for example, is the name of one of the rivers
River Kelvin
The Kelvin rises on watershed of Scotland on the moor south east of the village of Banton, east of Kilsyth - . At almost 22 miles long, it initially flows south to Dullatur Bog where it falls into a man made trench and takes a ninety degree turn flowing west along the northern boundary of the bog...
that runs through Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, and his brother is called Bruce, which is the name of one of the Scottish royal families.
In July 2006, MacKenzie wrote a column for the Sun newspaper referring to Scots as 'Tartan
Tartan
Tartan is a pattern consisting of criss-crossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours. Tartans originated in woven wool, but now they are made in many other materials. Tartan is particularly associated with Scotland. Scottish kilts almost always have tartan patterns...
Tosspots' and apparently rejoicing in the fact that Scotland has a lower life expectancy than the rest of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. MacKenzie's column provoked a storm of protest, and was heavily condemned by numerous commentators including Scottish MPs and MSPs.
Question Time
On 11 October 2007, MacKenzie appeared on the BBC's Question TimeQuestion Time (TV series)
Question Time is a topical debate BBC television programme in the United Kingdom, based on Any Questions?. The show typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer questions put to them by the audience...
TV programme and launched another attack on Scotland. During a debate about tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
, MacKenzie claimed that:
The comments came as part of an attack on Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
whom MacKenzie said could not be trusted to manage the British economy because he was "a Scot" and a "socialist", and insisting that this was relevant to the debate. Fellow panellist Chuka Umunna
Chuka Umunna
Chuka Harrison Umunna is a British Labour Party politician and employment lawyer. He has been the Member of Parliament for Streatham since 2010. After less than 18 months in Parliament, he was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Business Secretary by Labour Leader Ed Miliband on 7 October 2011...
from the think tank Compass
Compass (think tank)
Compass is a left wing pressure group, aligned with the UK Labour Party describing itself as 'An umbrella grouping of the progressive left whose sum is greater than its parts'...
called his comments "absolutely disgraceful", and booing and jeering were heard from the Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
studio audience. The BBC received 350 complaints and MacKenzie's comments drew widespread criticism - notably from the high-profile Scottish entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
Duncan Bannatyne
Duncan Bannatyne
Duncan Walker Bannatyne, OBE is a Scottish entrepreneur, philanthropist and author. His business interests include hotels, health clubs, spas, media, TV, stage schools, property and transport. He is most famous for his appearance as a business angel on the BBC programme Dragons' Den...
who responded on BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries...
:
Personal life
MacKenzie married Jacqueline Holland in 1968 in CamberwellCamberwell
Camberwell is a district of south London, England, and forms part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is a built-up inner city district located southeast of Charing Cross. To the west it has a boundary with the London Borough of Lambeth.-Toponymy:...
. They have a daughter (born 1969) and two sons (born 1972 and 1974). His elder son and his daughter (who left in January 1999) worked at Talk Radio. In 2006 they divorced on the grounds of adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
on the part of MacKenzie. On 25 July 2008, he married Sarah McLean in Sunningdale
Sunningdale
Sunningdale is a large village and civil parish in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England.-Location:Sunningdale is located close to the present border with Surrey, and is not far from Ascot, Sunninghill and Virginia Water. It is situated 24 miles west of London and 7...
, Berkshire. She works for McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
. In the late 1990s, MacKenzie was in the news when he was caught by The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday
The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1982 by Lord Rothermere, it became Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper following the closing of The News of the World in July 2011...
holidaying in what the paper described as a "love nest" in Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
with News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
secretary Joanna Duckworth. He lives in Weybridge
Weybridge
Weybridge is a town in the Elmbridge district of Surrey in South East England. It is bounded to the north by the River Thames at the mouth of the River Wey, from which it gets its name...
.