ALL eyes, including mine, were on The Sun, when the shocking news broke of the biggest police coverup in British history. How would the paper’s current editor Dominic Mohan respond, 23 years after his predecessor, Kelvin MacKenzie, made such a momumental error by writing the unfounded headline “The Truth” in response to the Hillsborough disaster?

In his grovelling apology after the independent report into the tragedy came out, Mr MacKenzie said the headline he should have written was “The Lies”. I immediately thought “we’ll do that” – so The Northern Echo’s front page headline, reporting the cover-up scandal, comprised those two damning words.

Mr MacKenzie’s mistake was in the interpretation of the allegations he had been fed by senior police sources and Tory MP Sir Irvine Patnick. He was not wrong to publish those allegations – which editor wouldn’t – but his failing was to label the claims so categorically as “The Truth”.

He will now be remembered for that headline – that catastrophic error of judgement.

But what of the present incumbent of the editor’s chair at The Sun? I have to say it all got off to a bad start when the incredible news broke of how police had doctored statements to divert blame away from their own failings.

While the rest of the industry’s websites led on Hillsborough, The Sun’s “Top story” was about a Twitter spat between Kerry Katona and her ex-husband. Who? Exactly.

Eventually, it was overtaken by the Hillsborough story, together with a video apology by Dominic Mohan, which was a nice touch.

And, in my view, The Sun went on to do a very decent job in print the next day. When I first saw the front page on Twitter – with the headline “The Real Truth” – I thought “fair enough”.

I tweeted to say that I thought it was well done, but there was plenty of reaction challenging that view. The Sun’s apology – “We are profoundly sorry for false reports” – bulletpointed in the bottom corner of the front page wasn’t enough, said one respected journalist.

Perhaps, but I think we have to think about the main story here. The real scandal is that police chiefs got away with a cover-up of truly historic proportions for 23 years, despite government inquiries.

That has to be kept in perspective against an error of judgement by one man – albeit a huge error.

Today’s Sun team were not to blame for what happened 23 years ago and their job was to report the main story, while acknowledging – prominently – the failure of its editor 23 years ago. I’m not sure what more Dominic Mohan could have done.

The real shocker was the loss of all news sense at The Daily Telegraph. To not have a paragraph on such a milestone story anywhere on page one is incredible.

They presumably knew it was a big story because their headline declared “Hillsborough, the biggest cover-up in history” – but you don’t get there until Page 6.

The Liverpool Echo, in stark contrast, has never let the fight for the truth be hidden away.

Its “Justice For The 96” campaign has been praised for keeping the issue in the public eye and is another example of the importance of local papers which are closest to their communities.

My final thought is how this whole sorry affair has acted as a reminder to editors of the need to challenge the secrecy of those in power.

Piles of secret documents are now known to have been doctored and successive governments let them get away with it.

When governments, councils, and other public bodies, use flimsy, inventive, jargon-laden excuses for avoiding transparency, we should remember what happened at Hillsborough – and be fundamentally sceptical.