Kelvin Mackenzie: Self - Editor, The Sun, 1981-1994

Quotes 

• [talking about a front-page report in The Sun just after the Argentinians invaded Port Stanley, with the headline "Surrender!" and the description of a "humiliating defeat" and the famous photograph of NP8901 being made to lie face-down] 

  Ben Fogle - Presenter : The man behind The Sun's iconic front page is adamant there was never any deliberate intention to criticise the Marines' behaviour.

  Kelvin MacKenzie : I reject the suggestion that in any way this front page could be considered to be anti-Marine. It is a replication of what is happening. It's not the Marines' defeat, it's humiliating for our nation. I do accept, in some stange way, that if that headline had been written today, it would have been more vile towards Argentina. And I'm not sure I would use the word "humiliating", to be fair. But whichever way you look at it, being forced to lie flat on your face, right, with somebody with a gun in your back, is not a great thing, but it's done in the heat of the moment. Newspapers are the first rough draft of history. I understand it. If you've been involved in a war, and you could've given your life to something, to suddenly... that there is some kind of vague question mark about something, I think *I* might be a little irritated 40 years later.