A campaign to ban tabloid newspaper The Sun from Manchester is ratcheting up a notch with Manchester musicians LEVELZ posting a video to Facebook showing them burn thousands of copies of the much-maligned paper.
The group, made up of 14 MCs and DJs, posted a two minute video to Facebook on Saturday. It begins with one member of the group stating that they’ve taken all copies of The Sun off the streets of Manchester and that: “We’re not having any of this, lies, upon lies, upon lies, upon lies.”
Their solution: “We’re gonna f**king burn the bastards.”
The masked members of the collective address the paper directly saying “Look, you f**ckin Sun dogs, we’re not inviting you into our city yeah, you’re not welcome!”
LEVELZ lays out its reasons for torching The Sun, which its describes as a “race baiting, poor hating, tax evading, elite protecting, phone hacking, election throwing, unity destroying – sh*t shovel of lies.”
READ MORE: ‘Right wing b*ll*cks’: Daily Mail, Sun trolled for blatant anti-Labour headlines
The Rupert Murdoch-owned paper was heavily criticized for its coverage of the May 22 Manchester Arena attack in which suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up following a concert by US pop star Ariana Grande.
A total of 22 people were killed in the attack, many of them young fans of the star. The following day the tabloid’s front page included an image of the attacker alongside his youngest victim, sparking outrage and resulting in a petition to ban the paper from the city.
WEDNESDAY’S SUN FRONT PAGE: with depressing inevitability, The Sun is the only newspaper to give the killer front page coverage. Not needed. pic.twitter.com/52pkwxMgDy
— The Sun Apologies (@SunApology) May 23, 2017
The Sun has been boycotted in the region before. The paper is reviled in Manchester’s neighbouring city of Liverpool, due to its coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans were killed unlawfully.
At the time the paper made a number of claims about the behavior of Liverpool supporters during the disaster including that they picked the pockets of the dead, assaulted police involved in resuscitation attempts, urinated on police involved in the rescue effort and made offensive and lewd comments about female casualties.
Recently both Merseyside clubs, Liverpool and Everton, have banned Sun journalists from reporting on matches at their respective grounds. During a meeting of England’s national Football Supporters Federation (FSF) on Sunday, a motion was unanimously passed by fans of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and around 70 other clubs to lobby their clubs and retailers in those areas to stop selling The Sun.
Furthermore a petition has been started in London to ban The Sun from the capital over its coverage of the Grenfell Tower disaster. It has so far garnered more than 13,000 signatories.
“In the aftermath of the truly devastating Grenfell Tower tragedy, with people across the capital and indeed the whole country rallying round to offer support, The Sun have instead chosen to pursue an agenda of victim blaming and grotesque voyeurism,” the petition states.
“The final straw though is surely the revelation that one of their journalists allegedly impersonated the relative of one of the victims to gain access to the hospital where some of the injured were being treated.
“This is way beyond the realms of what is acceptable in our society and is a vile, indefensible insult to everyone affected by this terrible event.”
Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.