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On Monday’s episode of the World Soccer Daily show, radio co-host Steven Cohen failed to apologize to Liverpool supporters regarding the inaccurate statements he made about their role in the Hillsborough Disaster that occurred on April 15, 1989.
The inaccurate statements made by Cohen on <a href="http://epltalk.com/steven-cohen-blames-liverpool-fans-for-hillsborough-disaster/5915" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">his April 13, 2009 episode</a> of World Soccer Daily were that:
<ol>
<li>Ticketless Liverpool supporters were the root cause of the Hillsborough Disaster,</li>
<li>6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters showed up outside Hillsborough, and</li>
<li>Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium was used week-in week-out without incident.</li>
</ol>
Instead of apologizing, he softened his April 13 stance on his belief that there were 6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters outside the ground. During the April 20, 2009 episode, he first said “There were several thousand who showed up without tickets.” But a few minutes later, when co-host Kenny Hassan gave Cohen an opportunity to retract the 6-8,000 number, Cohen replied “If it’s not the right number, it’s not the point. If I’m wrong on the number, then I’ll retract it and apologize. If it’s 25, 2500 or 25,000, my point is made for me. There were people there who shouldn’t have been there because they didn’t have tickets and they were hell bent on getting in. I’m sorry, those are the facts.”
Cohen is barking up the wrong tree when he claims ticketless fans contributed to the disaster. They did not. According to The <a href="http://www.hfdinfo.com/include/download4.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hillsborough Football Disaster paper</a> entitled Context and Consequences, page 17, “[Lord Justice] Taylor surmised there was no substance to the allegation that ticketless fans caused the Disaster.”
And while there may have been some ticketless supporters outside the ground — as there are at any major football game or sporting event — “I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion,” said Lord Taylor in his interim report. “With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the ‘conspiracy’ theory (of a large number of late-arriving ticketless supporters).”
Cohen has seemingly changed his tune about Liverpool — from the extreme opinion on April 13 that the ticketless fans were the root cause of the Hillsborough Disaster to a twisted logic on April 20 that insists on Liverpool fans admitting that they were part responsible for the disaster because some ticketless fans were hell bent on getting inside the stadium.
According to <a href="http://www.hfdinfo.com/include/download4.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a report from the Health and Safety Executive</a> (HSE), “it was unlikely that the terrace exceeded 10,124 and that total admissions were approximately equal to the designated capacity of 10,100 people.”
So even if there were as few as 24 ticketless supporters who were hell bent on getting into the Leppings Lane end, it would have been impossible for those fans — who were vastly outnumbered — to have an impact on the more than 3,000 fans who were inside the central pen.
“The point is if the people [without tickets] hadn’t been outside, this never [would have] happened,” said Cohen. “This is a stadium that had no problems prior to this particular day. That’s a fact.”
Except that it isn’t a fact. It’s inaccurate. As I reported in Monday’s <a href="http://epltalk.com/steven-cohen-blames-liverpool-fans-for-hillsborough-disaster/5915" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">EPL Talk article</a>, there had been several incidents at Hillsborough prior to April 15, 1989 — most notably a game in 1981 when <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=635507&amp;cc=5901" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">38 Spurs supporters suffered crush-related injuries</a> in the same Leppings Lane stand.
It’s time for Steven Cohen to share the facts with us that he claims he has. It’s also time for Cohen to publicly retract his statement that there were 6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters. And most importantly of all, he needs to retract his statement that Liverpool fans were responsible for the Hillsborough Disaster.
There’s no evidence to show that 24 supporters sneaking over the wall at Hillsborough were a factor in the death of the 96 Liverpool fans who died from crush-related injuries. But there are plenty of pieces of evidence that chronicle the list of mistakes that South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday and the Football Association committed.
For Steven Cohen to not apologize on air and to carry on about the need for Liverpool to share the responsibility of what happened at Hillsborough is sickening. It’s time for Cohen to admit he was wrong, apologize to Liverpool fans and to read the Taylor Interim Report to better educate himself and his World Soccer Daily listeners.
If he doesn’t apologize to his radio listeners, I’m concerned that he may spread his misinformation about what caused the Hillsborough Disaster to the weekly Fox Football Fone-In TV show that he co-hosts on Fox Soccer Channel. Having a loose cannon like Cohen on live TV is a risk that Fox has to determine whether it’s worth taking.
EPL Talk readers interested in learning more about Hillsborough as well as the chance to see TV footage and interviews should watch the excellent <a href="http://rawk.impulsed.net/20090411_Football_focus_Hillsborough_20th_Anniversary.wmv" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BBC Football Focus video</a> from April 11, 2009 which was a special tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster.
I should note that Kartik Krishnaiyer, from our sister site Major League Soccer Talk, had an interview previously arranged with Cohen for this Thursday, so feel free to post your questions for Cohen there. The interview is a golden opportunity for Cohen to respond to direct questions from you about his opinions regarding what really happened at Hillsborough.
You can listen to the segment of the April 20 episode where Cohen discusses the EPL Talk article below.
UPDATE: On May 18, 2009, <a href="http://epltalk.com/steven-cohen-apologizes-for-inaccurate-hillsborough-claims/7478" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steven Cohen apologized on World Soccer Daily</a> for his unfortunate and inaccurate statements he made about the Hillsborough Disaster.
UPDATE 2: The comments regarding the Steven Cohen controversy have been closed. It’s time to return the discussion to football.

Steven Cohen offers Liverpool fans no Hillsborough apology

Steven Cohen offers Liverpool fans no Hillsborough apology - World Soccer Talk

Steven Cohen, co-host of the <a href="http://www.worldsoccerdaily.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">World Soccer Daily</a> radio show, has been at it again.
While the rest of the world last week was paying tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Tragedy, Cohen was complaining on his U.S. radio show that Liverpool fans failed to take responsibility for Hillsborough as well as claiming that if 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans had not shown up, the Hillsborough Disaster would never have happened.
The problem is, he’s wrong. Dead wrong.
<h1>Steven Cohen’s Statements About the Hillsborough Disaster</h1>
So what did Cohen say that was so wrong? Here are three statements that Cohen made about the Hillsborough Disaster on his Monday, April 13, 2009 episode of World Soccer Daily (note, you can listen to the entire audio clip at the bottom of this post):
<blockquote>“People showing up without ticket, hell bent in getting into somewhere where they shouldn’t be going because they don’t have tickets, is the root cause of [the Hillsborough Disaster].”
“I’m yet to read anybody write in this weekend’s Sunday papers in England, where they’re all doing big commemorations about the 96, and why we should never forget and how it’s changed the game, nobody discusses the 6-8,000 who showed up without tickets and my argument has always been, if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”
“[Hillsborough] is a stadium that week-in week-out, Sheffield Wednesday used without incident.”</blockquote>
<h1>World Soccer Daily Playing With Fire</h1>
Hosted by Steven Cohen and Kenny Hassan, the Los Angeles-based show is broadcast nationwide each weekday on Sirius Satellite Radio and also available as a daily podcast, which is one of the top 10 most popular sports podcasts on iTunes.
Without a doubt, Cohen is the voice of soccer in America. Since the launch of his network in May 2002, Cohen has succeeded in growing World Soccer Daily into the must-listen show about soccer in the United States. Coupled with his weekly co-host slot on Fox Soccer Channel’s Fox Football Fone-In show, 46-year-old Cohen has built a sizeable following, many of whom are impressionable fans who are relatively new to the sport and hang on his every word.
That’s fine when it’s fun and games, but when Cohen (a Chelsea supporter) spews out misinformation about the Hillsborough Disaster, it’s dangerous. One, because his beliefs about Hillsborough are completely wrong. And two, because by making his beliefs public, he’s giving many newbie soccer fans false information and thereby spreading the wrong information about the cause of the disaster. With such a large audience on radio and television, he has a responsibility to educate listeners on what really happened on April 15, 1989.
<h1>The Facts About The Hillsborough Tragedy</h1>
To dispel his myths, here are the facts:
“The immediate cause of the gross overcrowding and hence the disaster was the failure, when gate C was opened, to cut off access to the central pens which were already overfull,” — <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 265</a>.
“Planning apart, however, it should have been clear in the control room where there was a view of the pens and of the crowd at the turnstiles that the tunnel had to be closed. If orders had been given to that effect when gate C was opened, the fans could have been directed to the empty areas of the wings and this disaster could still have been avoided. Failure to give that order was a blunder of the first magnitude,” — <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 231</a>.
“I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion. With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the ‘conspiracy’ theory (of a large number of late-arriving ticketless supporters). I am satisfied that the large concentration at Leppings Lane from 2.30 pm to 2.50 pm did not arrive as a result of any concerted plan. There were, I accept, small groups without tickets who were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground. They, together with the minority who had drunk too much, certainly aggravated the problem faced by the police. But that main problem was simply one of large numbers packed into the small area outside the turnstiles,” <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 208.</a>
“The police witnesses who most impressed me did not consider the number of ticketless fans to be inordinately large. This accords with two other sources of evidence,” <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 200</a>.
“Sheffield Wednesday FC’s own admission count system showed the terrace did not exceed its 10,100 capacity (for the Leppings Lane end). As part of their analysis, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) counted the number of [Liverpool] supporters entering the ground, including those through the turnstiles, through Gate C and even those who climbed over the turnstiles. They gave three admission figures based on their analysis. Their first figure was 9,267, their ‘best estimate’ was 9,734, and their third figure was a ‘maximum estimate’ of 10,124. The HSE report stated it was unlikely that the terrace exceeded 10,124 and that total admissions were approximately equal to the designated capacity of 10,100 people. Taylor surmised there was no substance to the allegation that ticketless fans caused the Disaster,” <a href="http://www.hfdinfo.com/include/download4.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Hillsborough Football Disaster: Context And Consequences, page 17</a>. Also watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOFhqfOX7Xg#t=2m18s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">video evidence</a> of the fans walking through the turnstiles and walking into the tunnel.
The Taylor Report exonerated the Liverpool fans of any culpability. “The main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control,” <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 278</a>.
Leppings Lane stand was deemed unsuitable in 1981 after <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=635507&amp;cc=5901" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">38 Spurs fans suffered crush related injuries</a>. Sheffield Wednesday <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/interim-report-hillsborough.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">never carried out the work required</a>. In addition to the <a href="http://www.flaweb.org.uk/docs/specsafe/majaccbr.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1981 incident</a>, crushes also occurred at Hillsborough in <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=635507&amp;cc=5901" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1987</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_Disaster#Before_the_disaster" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1988</a>. In fact Liverpool played Nottingham Forest in the same stage of the tournament one year prior at the same ground where <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_Disaster#Before_the_disaster" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Liverpool fans were crushed</a>. Liverpool filed an official complaint prior to the 1989 FA-Cup semi final to air their concerns about safety.
Cohen was absolutely wrong on his April 13th show regarding the statements he made about the Hillsborough Tragedy. There were not, as he claimed, 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans. Cohen was emphatically wrong when he claimed that Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium was used week-in week-out without incident. And the reason none of the English newspapers last Sunday discussed the “6-8,000 who showed up without tickets” is because they didn’t exist. The vast majority of English journalists and pundits know better because they’ve taken time to study the facts rather than to believe the lies told by The Sun and the South Yorkshire Police.
Sure, there were a very small minority of ticketless fans at the ground. And sure, some of the supporters were drunken (as at any football game or sporting event), but the fact of the matter is that Cohen is living in the 80s with the inaccurate statements he’s spewing out.
The Liverpool supporters were a victim of a combination of mistakes by the South Yorkshire Police (for failing to notice that the central pen was overcrowded while the pens to the left and right had room for more spectators, as well as not directing the Liverpool fans who came through the turnstiles away from the central pen), Sheffield Wednesday Football Club (Leppings Lane was ill-suited to admit the 10,100 fans, had too few turnstiles and the club failed to fix those and other issues between 1981-1989 even though they were well aware of them) and the Football Association (for deciding to play the semi-final match at Hillsborough despite previous crushing incidents).
<h1>Cohen’s History of Blaming Liverpool Fans For Hillsborough</h1>
Cohen’s comments last week aren’t the first time he’s created controversy on American airwaves regarding Hillsborough. On December 5, 2006, he appeared on the Fox Football Fone-In TV show on the U.S. network Fox Soccer Channel and <a href="http://forums.thisisanfield.com/viewtopic.php?t=16262" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">claimed that Liverpool fans were responsible for Hillsborough</a>. He then <a href="http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=155637.msg2509230#msg2509230" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">apologized</a> on the December 12 episode of Fox Football Fone-In, but the damage was clearly already done.
In April, 2007, he <a href="http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=172742.0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">again blamed</a> the Liverpool fans for causing the Hillsborough Disaster, this time on his radio show.
He may have apologized on Fox Football Fone-In December 12, 2006, but his views haven’t changed one iota — rendering his 2006 apology virtually meaningless.
<h1>Comparisons to Kelvin MacKenzie</h1>
Cohen’s misinformed views about what caused the Hillsborough Disaster are similar in context to those of Kelvin MacKenzie.
On April 19, 1989, MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun newspaper <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Newspaper#Hillsborough" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">published a sensationalized account</a> of what happened at Hillsborough. MacKenzie’s newspaper that day alleged that ticketless and drunken Liverpool F.C. fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen outside the ground.
It’s taken 20 years of education in the United Kingdom to try to get the public to understand what was the real cause of the Hillsborough Disaster.
Then in November 2006, just days before Cohen said basically the same thing, MacKenzie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_MacKenzie#Hillsborough_controversy_reignited" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">again claimed</a> that drunken Liverpool fans caused the disaster.
“I’m still reading the same old stuff about who’s responsible. And it’s the police, it’s the stadium, it’s whatever,” said Cohen in the April 13 radio episode. Cohen then inferred that the Liverpool fans don’t take responsibility for their own actions regarding the events that led up to the Hillsborough Tragedy. Despite his December, 2006 apology, he obviously hasn’t changed his controversial beliefs and he continues to appear on the Fox Football Fone-In show week-in week out.
It’s fitting that on the April 13 episode of the Fox show, it was co-host Nick Webster who paid tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in a pre-recorded segment at the end of the show. Cohen wasn’t included.
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
Twenty years after the Hillsborough Disaster, we’re still hearing the same old lies about what happened on that fateful day. It’s time for people to educate themselves about what really happened and stand up against those who fabricate misinformation. For our current generation and future generations, we owe it to them and the 96 who died to tell the real truth of what transpired in Sheffield on April 15, 1989.
To learn more about what really happened at the Hillsborough Disaster, read the <a href="http://www.southyorks.police.uk/sites/default/files/foi/significantpublicinterest/interim%20report%20hillsborough.zip" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Interim Taylor Report</a>, and visit the <a href="http://www.hfdinfo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hillsborough Football Disaster</a> and <a href="http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hillsborough Justice Campaign</a> websites.
Also, read the follow-up article to this one entitled <a href="http://epltalk.com/steven-cohen-offers-liverpool-fans-no-hillsborough-apology/6074" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steven Cohen Offers Liverpool Fans No Hillsborough Apology</a>.
UPDATE: On May 18, 2009, <a href="http://epltalk.com/steven-cohen-apologizes-for-inaccurate-hillsborough-claims/7478" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steven Cohen apologized on World Soccer Daily</a> for his unfortunate and inaccurate statements he made about the Hillsborough Disaster.
UPDATE 2: The comments regarding the Steven Cohen controversy have been closed. It’s time to return the discussion to football.
UPDATE 3: Fox Soccer Channel announced on July 29, 2009 that <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&amp;newsId=20090729006001&amp;newsLang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steven Cohen’s position on Fox Football Fone-In has been filled by Eric Wynalda</a>.
UPDATE 4: Steven Cohen announced on August 21, 2009 that his World Soccer Daily show that day would be his last.

Steven Cohen blames Liverpool fans for Hillsborough Disaster

Steven Cohen blames Liverpool fans for Hillsborough Disaster - World Soccer Talk

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