I'm sure he'll find another hole to crawl out of sometime soon though. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39854061
The focus is on Mackenzie because of his notoriety, yet journalists submit dozens of articles a week that won't be included because of the editor's say so. Why isn't he being held to task?
I assume he's negotiated a pay off? At his age too, if he's managed to get a final wad, it was all worth it wasn't it?
****ing prick. Shame, as BCC said, the editor (who I believe is Tony Gallagher) is getting off scot free.
He used to be editor of the whole paper, I wouldn't be surprised if his stuff didn't have to be approved by anyone else.
If that is the case then the current incumbent is a ****ing idiot. No Editor should ever lose control of what makes the print, if only to protect his own interests.
The editor probably won't see much of the paper on a day-to-day basis, save for the front page and the big stories inside. However, it's unlikely that McKenzie chose the picture. The article will have been seen by several people, however - a couple of subs (at least), some senior editorial staff, and possibly Gallagher himself. The Sun knew what they were getting with McKenzie though. He was employed to write this sort of thing, as is Rod Liddle and as are various others. McKenzie is toxic because of Hillsborough, but the hateful bile that The Sun's columnists come out with is unlikely to change all that much in tone as a result of his sacking (which Rebekah Brooks has been agitating for for a while, apparently).
But surely a column by someone as infamous as Mackenzie would fall into that category? Put it this way, if I was editor of The Sun and he was writing a column then because of the history then I'd want to read it before going to print. Unless of course they were giving him a noose to hang himself. Agreed he defo wouldn't choose the pic.
My knowledge of what editors do, based on personal experience, is that they get involved in very little outside of front pages and the big exclusives and the like. I have no direct knowledge of what practices are like at The Sun, but on any other paper I've been near that's been the case. McKenzie wrote a weekly column so therefore I would have thought it unlikely that Gallagher would read it every week, though it is possible. Your final sentence there is probably the most pertinent. Brooks is believed to want a slightly softer Sun and this is one way of achieving that.
I appreciate that won't be the case at other titles but my thought process was 'it's The Sun, it's Mackenzie'. However the fact that literally nobody is blaming the editor would suggest that you're right.
I don't have the insight of you and Richard, which makes your thoughts of interest. On one of last night's news programmes covered it by laughing at the convenient absence of editorial staff, which gave the impression that other professionals expected it to have oversight and that the whole thing was colluded.
i don't read the Sun, and choose not to whenever there are other options, so didn't see it. Catching up on it, it seems like it wasn't a particularly pleasant or clever article to have written nor to have included in the paper. But what the hell is all this about 'racial slur' and the Sun apologising as they were unaware of his heritage? From what I've read about it, and maybe I'm missing some of the article, that seems like madness yet again ('pc / country gone made'. The article said "His eyes make him "certain not only are the lights not on, there is definitely nobody at home", adding: "I get a similar feeling when seeing a gorilla at the zoo" What the hell is racist about that? And when talking about heritage, we all are descended from apes anyway. Not defending the Sun for such a stupid article, but come on.
