Thanks to The Sun, for enriching each of our lives

Those at the super-soaraway Sun are, yet again, making outlandish claims that they’ve changed the world.

This time, they’ve turned their sights on social media and ‘Britain’s most popular paper’ is claiming to be its pioneer with a new marketing strapline: “The Original Social Media”.

The newspaper that ‘gifted’ the United Kingdom with John Major in 1992 and destroyed its Liverpudlian circulation in 1989, will now be running a five-week campaign that will “show that The Sun’s stories influence conversations at home, at work and in cafés & pubs, online and across social media networks”.

Social media is based on networking, conversation and interaction with like-minded people.  Twitter is, in essence, a place for you to have pub conversations en masse, the same for Facebook and the like.

So is The Sun genuinely trying to convince the world that pre-social media we wouldn’t have had such conversations without them? Would after work drinks in an alternate reality, where the paper never existed, be silent?

A press release, which launched on the News International Commercial website last Tuesday, featured on the Press Gazette website on Friday and, bar that, has had little-to-no attention.

Rob Painter, marketing director at The Sun explained in the release: “The Sun continues to fuel more conversations up and down the UK every day than any other media brand. That’s why we call it the Original Social Media.”

Paul Hayes, managing director at News International Commercial said in the release: “This campaign highlights that the reach of The Sun goes far beyond the printed and online versions of the paper and influences conversations – providing advertisers with the opportunity to connect with a truly engaged audience. The Sun brand is as relevant as ever today and will continue to be so.”

So before we attribute mindless chit-chatting – let’s face it, that’s what we do on Twitter, right? – as we know it to The Sun, let’s not forget the paper has, of course, a reputation for peculiar, and occasionally outright outrageous, claims.

In 1987, Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of the paper at the time, published a libellous front-page which claimed Elton John had had sex with underage “rentboys”. He also alleged that the pop singer had his dog’s vocal cords cut out to stop them barking and, therefore, keeping him awake at night.

John sued the paper for libel and was awarded £1million in damages. MacKenzie, always humble in defeat, was later quoted as saying that the singer hadn’t suffered any loss or damage as a result of the claims and therefore he should give the paper back its money.

MacKenzie again, in 1989, really outdid himself; this time being attributed to one of the biggest cock-ups in newspaper history.

Twenty-three years on from the Hillsborough disaster, which saw 96 deaths and 766 injuries to Liverpool football fans, The Sun still struggles to sell papers in Merseyside.  Mackenzie, again, wrote the front-page splash headline ‘The Truth’, with three bullet points which read:

•        Some fans picked pockets of victims
•        Some fans urinated on brave cops
•        Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life

All lies.

The disaster was, of course, national news and covered live by every broadcaster in the country, yet no evidence to substantiate the claims was ever found. Mackenzie apologised for the obvious error in judgment in 1993 but repudiated it in 2006, claiming he only did so to appease Rupert Murdoch.

“I was not sorry then,” he said, “and I am not sorry now.”

The paper’s pretty demoralising approach to mental health and homosexuality has also been criticised.

At the tail-end of 2011, regular Sun columnist and all-round unpleasant presenter Jeremy Clarkson referred to those who committed suicide on train tracks as “selfish” because the “disruption it causes is immense”. As a result, the entire editorial team was forced to be retrained by Samaritans in the reporting of suicide after a large volume of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.

David McGuire, creative director at The John Knowles Company said: “How long will it take someone to quip that, if anything, The Sun is the epitome of anti-social media?

“When people, who are clearly so astute do something apparently so naive, perhaps there’s a bigger plan.”

He added: “The more I think about it, the more I hope it’s a stunt.”

So please forgive me, The Sun, if I don’t quite agree with your new campaign or the arrogance you seem to perspire which allows you to claim to have invented conversation.

Perhaps the super-soaraway will next allege that its ‘Page 3’ girls inspired the internet’s second biggest commodity: porn.

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• Joseph Kelsall

  Mombser – I was not being condescending at all.Jews were involved in the slave trade in Africa and the USA; just google it.
  Now I don’t know of Feldman and Shammer;please elucidate. But. I do know of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; two young jewish guys who were murdered along with James Chaney in Philadelphia,Mississippi. THEY WERE NOTALLOWEDTO SHARE A COMMON BURIAL PLACE. Even in death they were separated! I have been to Chaney’s grave to pay my respects. It is on a little ‘island’ just outside an old slave cemetery where the tombstones are just huge boulders. Chaney has a granite carved stone which is constantly vandalised. My family and I restored it as best we could on our last visit. Let us now revisit the Martin Luther King legend. In his book ‘Why we can’t wait’, Dr King relates a story of Jewish rabbis advising him to bide his time. Of course, he ignored them ( see, leter from Birmingham Jail). Would you like me to continue on to my experiences in Palestine. I don’t think you would like that.

• mombser2

   We live in a free land here and in Israel- you may speak as you find.
  At least you have accepted and intimated that the slave trade was “A Trade” in that era an acceptable one-
  Now lets go back to Africa and Saudi and how the Slave Trade still goes on-
  Only the other day the Saudi prince uttered that slavery was part of Islam-
  So now in the 21st century lets have headlines of modern day slavery and where it exists.

• Joseph Kelsall

  Mombser – You either avoid or are ignorant of the poor ‘creatures’ queueing up in the early hours of the morning a the Bethlehem checkpoint towards Jerusalem. They await the whim of a sulking Israel guard to see if they can enter THEIR OWN COUNTRY to earn a day’s miserable pittance from an Israeli with a second home in Jerusalem. Their conditions are pitiful and imposed by Nazionism. Under their conditions, I would, as Sir Winston Churchill suggested, ‘take one wiith me’.
  Have you been to Hebron and seen the swaggering lunatics from Brooklyn who now squat in Palestinian homes? Palestinian  businesses in Shuhada Street have been closed and their front doors welded up so that ‘Jewish blow ins’ have exclusive use of this once busy high street. They guard this street with M16 rifles, 30,000 of which were DONATED by the USA. ISRAEL has caused the enslavement of Palestinians, in their own land!
  Palestinians had NOTHING to do with the Holocaust,  which you now celebrate as a wedge against Europe. Just remember. In 1933, the whole of world Judaism declared war on Germany which caused massive suffering until 1939. Do you really blame the Germans for writing ‘Juden!Nicht hier kaufen!’ on their windows?
  As for your ‘Kristalnacht’; Liverpool’s Germans had their own ‘Kristalnacht’ when all of their shops ( and there were many) had their wndows broken. The Liverpool public were breaking German traders’ windows as punishment for the bombing of their homes  and facilities.
  I know that jews were used as slave labour in WW2, and that terrible. But just take a trip to Kanchanaburi in Thailand and see the Bridge on the River Kwai where thousands of Briitish soldiers died terrible deaths at the hands of the Japanese.
  We’ve all ‘got our crosses to bear!’

• mombser2

   Just because you write a few letters to the Jerusalem Post dont think you can twist and ignore the truth-
  How many suicide bombs went off in Israel?
  How many rockets were fired from Gaza.?
  How many Rockets have been replaced by Hezbollah under the noses of the UN observers?
  Who can trust who under these circumstances- Your “Pseudo” Humanitarian feelings impress me -not-
  When Israel can be sure that she can have security things might change- Until then- Both Hamas, Hezbollah and Yes even the PLO are still at war-
  Quote from  . Mahmoud Abbas part of his thesis when at the Moscow University (Did you go there too) – The architect of the strategy for the destruction of Israel – not with one stroke, but gradually, in stages, like the creation of a Palestinian state ”

  Here I quote from The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement. (HAMAS)

  “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts,
  . The Islamic Resistance movement is but one squadron that should be supported… until the enemy is vanquished and Allah victory is realized. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine…….” “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours. Palestine is an Islamic land”…..

  There again maybe you agree with those sentiments-
  Maybe you would like to see the destruction of Israel- Even Galloway admitted- “If Israel was not there it would be preferable”

  Where can I find your displeasure with Hamas and its newly created criminal punishment of crucifixion for fraternisng with Israelis? This to is surely an abomination against an individual-

  Hey how many times did you write regarding the West Bank refugees when Jordan kept them in Camps festering hate-?
  How many times have you visited Lebanon and seen the camp at Ain el-Helweh- close to Port Sidon-
  Daily there are problems, killings-
  And you worry about a que one which has a purpose, regardless of how you wish to spin it-