Kelvin Mackenzie has issued an apology for his role in The Sun's controversial coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.
Of course, Mackenzie has apologised before, only to withdraw his apology years later claiming: "I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now."
Back in 2006 Mackenzie said he had only apologised in the first place because Rupert Murdoch made him do so.
Now it isn't Murdoch but the weight of overwhelming evidence and public pressure that has forced his latest apology.
Mackenzie said:
"Today I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpool for that headline. I too was totally misled. Twenty three ago I was handed a piece of copy from a reputable news agency in Sheffield in which a senior police officer and a senior local MP were making serious allegations against fans in the stadium. I had absolutely no reason to believe that these authority figures would lie and deceive over such a disaster.
"As the Prime Minister has made clear these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves.
"It has taken more than two decades, 400,000 documents and a two-year inquiry to discover to my horror that it would have been far more accurate had I written the headline The Lies rather than The Truth. I published in good faith and I am sorry that it was so wrong."
We probably shouldn't be surprised that Mackenzie's apology attempts to blame others, despite it being his choice to publish and his headline.
Other editors and journalists looked at the inflammatory allegations and steered well clear. Mackenzie and his reporter Harry Arnold showed no such restraint.
It has taken 23 years for Mackenzie to acknowledge the story he published was a pack of lies. Based on this apology it now seems unlikely he will ever admit responsibility.
Understandably, one Hillsborough campaigner who lost two daughters in the disaster has branded Mackenzie's apology "too little, too late".
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