Fulsome apologies.

[Bryn]

Lots of use of the phrase "fulsome apology" have been heard in the course of the debate in the House of Commons re. today's Hillborough report.

Fulsome

This term originally meant “abundant, generous, full,” but that sense was rendered obsolete when the word acquired a negative connotation of “offensive, excessive, effusive.” Conservative descriptivists rail against the use of fulsome in a positive sense, but the cold, hard fact is that this sense has been increasingly resurgent for many years, and the adulatory meaning is now much more common than the condemnatory one.

If you wish to stand fast before the tsunami of inevitability, be my guest, but fulsome as an exquisite insult has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Some commentators recommend that because of the word’s ambiguity, it’s best to avoid its use altogether. If you insist, make sure the context is clear.

from: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/10-w...think-they-do/

Which meaning is most applicable to the PM's apology, and which to any eventually offered by Kelvin Mackenzie?

[french frank]

Having read the journalist's story behind his own contribution and Mackenzie's, I don't think Mackenzie need bother with an apology. There probably wouldn't be a printable word to describe it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Certain tabloids (whose names we are all too familiar with) were responsible for the misrepresentation of more than just the facts of Hillsborough throughout the 1970s and '80s. The same went for skewed radio and TV discussions, documentaries and news reports - as was revealed at the time by the Glasgow Media Group's investigations into media machinations and bias.

The sooner the truths are out and the records put straight, in the name of rehabilitating unjustly derided individuals and ideas, many of them subsequently proven correct, the sooner some kind of restorative justice be applied to a whole era of press misreporting, police cover-ups and all-round political manipulation.

[Nick Armstrong]

Which meaning is most applicable to the PM's apology, and which to any eventually offered by Kelvin Mackenzie?

He has, I see:


Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun: "Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty-three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield, in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster. As the prime minister has made clear, these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves. It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong."

[johncorrigan]

He has, I see:


Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun: "Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty-three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield, in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster. As the prime minister has made clear, these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves. It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong."

So much for investigative journalism, MacKenzie, you excuse for a human being!

[Bryn]

He has, I see:


Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun: "Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty-three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield, in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster. As the prime minister has made clear, these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves. It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong."

On television he claimed the 'information' for the story came from Liverpool sources. Now they have moved across the country to Sheffield. Fulsome in the derogatory sense, definitely.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Fulsome concerns from our Friends in South.

But why nail Kelvin MacKenzie? The police initiated the lie. Why? Well, they needed a lie, and it seems a whopping lie, and in their view it would have been easy pickings: Toxteth/Heysel/Militant: stuff the Liverpudleans instead.

[jayne lee wilson]

Watching Newsnight I could hardly hold the tears back. But we ALWAYS KNEW the truth here, we'd heard it, over and again, from those who were there!

What we couldn't know was - how far some would go - Police, Tories... Liverpool, football - oh what an easy target for deception.
Kelvin Mackenzie wanted to believe the lies and stereotypes, as did so many others.

So - a "Public Vindication" full of exhaustion and pain, and needless death. Maybe, some relief...

Is Justice even possible now? Better people than me will be trying to achieve it, day after day, every day, for years ahead.

I'll go on, feebly, putting other papers on top of all those unsold Suns in the supermarket...

[johncorrigan]

Watching Newsnight I could hardly hold the tears back. But we ALWAYS KNEW the truth here, we'd heard it, over and again, from those who were there!

What we couldn't know was - how far some would go - Police, Tories... Liverpool, football - oh what an easy target for deception.
Kelvin Mackenzie wanted to believe the lies and stereotypes, as did so many others.

So - a "Public Vindication" full of exhaustion and pain, and needless death. Maybe, some relief...

Is Justice even possible now? Better people than me will be trying to achieve it, day after day, every day, for years ahead.

I'll go on, feebly, putting other papers on top of all those unsold Suns in the supermarket...

Very well said, Jayne.

[Mary Chambers]

I was shocked by the report. It does seem to me, though, that we are now being given an impression that the police were all evil and incompetent and the fans were all perfectly-behaved angels. I doubt if this is a true picture. (I live in the Liverpool area, too.)

[french frank]

Kelvin Mackenzie wanted to believe the lies and stereotypes, as did so many others. [...]

Up to a point ... . (Reporters don't write headlines)

[ahinton]

From what I've heard to date, it's a rather worrying disproportionality of response here that strikes me as possibly having some uncomfortable parallels with the original cover-ups; yes, of course the emergence of the truths and the various possibilities of further inquiries, reopening of inquests, the bringing of criminal charges and the like is indeed welcome, yet there seems so far to have been a questionable balance between, on the one hand, the shortcomings of the emergency services' actions and inactions at the event itself and their subsequent large-scale and elaborate attempts to conceal the truth and, on the other hand, the gross and grave shortcomings of a judicial system that has not merely permitted but effectively endorsed the passage of almost a quarter century between that event and the current revelations. Justice for thalidomide victims is a not dissimilar example and this has been around for well over twice as long as the Hillsborough case.

Britain, even today, somehow contrives to retain an enviable long-standing international reputation for the effectiveness and fairness of its legal and judicial systems (so much so, indeed, as to attract Russian oligarchs to bring their legal disputes to London for trial); do woefully protracted cases such as these suggest that such a reputation is any longer deserved? For all the noisily made excuses of which we'll all hear plenty in the immediate future that today's emergency services are vastly more trustworthy, professional and accountable than might have been the case at the time of Hillsborough, public trust in those services will inevitably be severely dented by what is now being placed in the public domain and a great deal of time and effort will almost certainly be required for such trust to be regained; it is surely only to be expected that public trust of a judicial system so flawed as to sanction the appalling mishandling of this case will suffer at least as greatly, but it needs to be brought into the open at least as much as do the recent findings in the case itself, otherwise anyone wishing to put another such case out to grass in order to protect their own interests will likely be tempted to believe that Parliament and the judiciary will assist them in so doing.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Fulsome concerns from our Friends in South.

But why nail Kelvin MacKenzie? The police initiated the lie. Why? Well, they needed a lie, and it seems a whopping lie, and in their view it would have been easy pickings: Toxteth/Heysel/Militant: stuff the Liverpudleans instead.

The police may well be guilty, but the Sun blurted it out in its usual reprehensible and irresponsible way.
Now is there anyone out there who considers their "apology" to be sincere?

[ahinton]

The police may well be guilty, but the Sun blurted it out in its usual reprehensible and irresponsible way.
Now is there anyone out there who considers their "apology" to be sincere?

Yes - those who made them and their closest friends and family at most, I suspect. In any event, of course, an apology is well-nigh redundant given that the entire handling of the matter these past 23+ years has been an apology for justice.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

MacKenzie claims that at the time he was reporting statements made by a senior local MP and a senior police officer, and he has a trail to those statements through a reliable press agency. I'm not going to rush to condemn the Sun until those claims are tested.