With barefaced lying becoming more commonplace in Murdoch & Nine newspapers, perhaps it's time that Australians consider the Liverpool solution?

The Sun (U.K.) first published in 1965 is owned by News Group Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

For the last 31 years the people of Liverpool in England have boycotted this newspaper because of its barefaced lying about the events of one single day.

In 2016 even some Liverpool taxis carried the boycott message.

The Echo, 19 September 2016

This boycott is said to have markedly affected sales of this newspaper up to the present day.

The boycott is still being regularly reported. 

In November 2019 two academics from Department of Government, London School of Economics & Political Science & Department of Political Science, University of Zurich published a study which suggests the the number of Liverpudlians who did not vote for Brexit was possibly increased in number by the fact that The Sun was not read it that city.

Given how loose-with-the-truth News Corp Australia journalism in particular becomes during election years, perhaps it is time rural and regional communities considered whether they too might like to drive a newspaper such as The Australian or The Daily Telegraph out of their towns and villages.

It is painfully obvious that The Daily Telegraph hopes to step into the print space left vacant after News Corp banished the Clarence Valley's 161 year old The Daily Examiner to a digital website.

I imagine its editor is also hoping to pick up readers in other regional areas along the NSW coast.

BACKGROUND

The Overtake. 19 July 2018:

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death in overcrowding, the Murdoch-owned newspaper printed pages of false claims that not only blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, but accused them of urinating on police officers and other fans, beating up officers attempting CPR, and pickpocketing the dead. 

These reports have since all been proven as fabrication. 

The effect that the disaster had on the people of Liverpool is huge, not least for those who attended the match, but also those who lost friends and family. 

The saddest of these is Stephen Whittle, known as the 97th victim of Hillsborough. Whittle had work commitments and therefore sold his matchday ticket to a friend, who tragically died there. 

In 2011 Whittle took his own life, with the coroner citing depression and likely survivor’s guilt caused by the events of Hillsborough. Whittle left £61,000 to the families of those who died at Hillsborough. 

In the aftermath of Hillsborough, the city of Liverpool came together to stand up to the figures of authority who were lying to their faces.....

The truth eventually became official record 27 years after Hillsborough, when a jury exonerated the fans of any wrongdoing, and condemned the police present at the match of unlawful killing by gross negligence. 

However, there is still a way to go before the people of Liverpool will consider justice served, as many of the police officers still await trial, and many who attacked Liverpool supporters, including The Sun and Boris Johnson, have only felt repercussions from the fans themselves....

Communities in Liverpool have truly come together and forced a decline in the newspaper’s readership and therefore local sales figures. It makes a lot of sense that both Liverpool and Everton football clubs have banned The Sun’s reporters from press conferences at their stadiums, but the real power of the people is shown by the actions of national companies. 

The fact that supermarkets such as Tesco, which stopped stocking the paper purely due to a lack of demand rather than any political or moral affiliations, say it isn’t worth selling the paper, shows the power of the city and its people.....


The boycott in Liverpool occasionally extends further than Merseyside, usually with travelling Scousers, and is now reaching further with the use of Twitter through accounts such as Total eclipse of the S*n and people encouraging others to hide copies of The Sun when they see it on sale.