The Independent newspaper reported that Liverpool Football Club has "banned reporters" from The sun newspaper from "attending matches at Anfield" and from having access to interview the players or the manager. The questions to ask are, why is there such animosity between the paper and Liverpool and what impact has it had on the paper and media coverage in general?
The mistakes in reporting
The history between both the newspaper and the club stretches back to the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, in which 96 Liverpool supporters were "unlawfully killed", as the Guardian newspaper stated.
However it was the paper's reporting of the events which really had an impact. Four days after the tragedy, The Sun ran a story labelled 'The Truth'. In it, it said that the Liverpool supporters had "picked pockets of victims", had "urinated on brave cops" and that some fans beat up a policeman giving the "kiss of live". The Guardian also reports The Sun claimed that "police officers, firemen and ambulance crew were punched and kicked". As a result of this, outrage ensued. The then manager Kenny Dalglish said in his autobiography that "the reaction on Merseyside was one of complete outrage". Despite the editor of The Sun, Kelvin McKenzie, admitting at the time that he had made "a fundamental mistake", the damage was already done.
Dalglish went on to state that "newsagents stopped selling The Sun, people wouldn't mention its name. They were burning copies of it. Anyone representing The Sun was abused".
The impact of what was said
So what impact has the city-wide boycott had on the paper itself? The BBC reported that The Sun claimed that it was "the most terrible mistake in its history".
It is clear that it will have a large impact. Liverpool is a large city and if the boycott extends throughout, it will have financial implications; I am just not too sure how much. What is clear is that it is terrible for its reputation. It is smeared with the mistakes that were made all those years ago. And the media in general? Most significantly it will make editor's think before they do. They cannot be so brazen going forward. We can see clearly the effects if they do.
