MacKenzie is remembered as the man responsible for the paper's "Gotcha" headline after the sinking of the Argentinian light cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands War, as well its highly controversial coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, which caused widespread outrage and was dismissed as "entirely inaccurate" by both the Press Council and the official government inquiry into the tragedy
Critics accused the paper of exaggerating or even inventing news stories under MacKenzie (on some occasions this was proven to be the case [1]) and of severely dumbing down public discourse. The paper was frequently accused (often but not exclusively by left-wing and liberal critics) of promoting jingoism, racism, homophobia, and intolerance.
However, MacKenzie is quoted as saying in the early 1980s (on the subject of how he perceived his target audience and how he approached journalism):
“ You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news). â€
MacKenzie has also stated, perhaps only half-seriously, that he feels that his own spell as editor of The Sun had a "positively downhill impact on journalism". Numerous observers, such as ex-Sun deputy editor Roy Greenslade, left-wing journalist John Pilger, and playwright Dennis Potter, have commented more seriously on the alleged 'Murdoch effect' - and more specifically about the effect of the Sun during the MacKenzie era, supposedly by far the most significant example of this effect - on British journalism, media, political climate, and intellectual culture, as well as on British culture and society at large. These commentators argued that Murdoch's media enterprise, and in particular MacKenzie's Sun, not only helped to keep Thatcher in power and enable the successful continuation of the "Thatcher revolution" while successfully smearing her left-wing opponents, but also had such a profound effect on all areas of the British media as to be perhaps the most significant contributor to the perceived "dumbing-down" of British news, popular entertainment, and culture across the board.