Council calls for boycott of The Sun

The city council this week voted to call for the boycott and attacked the paper for “blatant lies” in its now infamous 1989 headline story “The Truth.”

A campaign called “Total Eclipse of the S*n,” which originated on Merseyside, is seeking to rid newsagents’ shelves of the publication in protest over its coverage of a disaster which claimed 96 lives - two of them from Preston.

Coun John Browne put forward a notice of motion to the city council calling on shops locally not to stock it. And members voted to support it.

The motion read: “Contrary to the facts, The Sun published a front page story with the banner headline ‘The Truth’ which contained blatant lies. Christine Anne Jones and Gerald Baron from Preston were two of the 96 people to die that day. For this reason the council calls on all retailers and vendors of newspapers in Preston to stop selling The Sun and applauds the group ‘Total Eclipse of the S*n’ for endeavouring to rid the North West of the newspaper.”