SO what of this morning's front pages on the Hillsborough cover-up?

All eyes, including mine, were on The Sun. How would current editor Dominic Mohan respond, 23 years after his predecessor, Kelvin MacKenzie, made such a momumental error by writing the unfounded headline "The Truth"?

It was Mr MacKenzie who inspired today's front page headline in The Northern Echo - "The Lies". In his apology yesterday, Mr MacKenzie said the headline he should have written was "The Lies" and I immediately thought "we'll do that".

His mistake was in the interpretation of the allegations he had been fed by senior police sources and an MP. He was not wrong to publish those allegations - which editor wouldn't - but he got it wrong by labelling claims as "The Truth".

He will now be remembered for that headline - that catastrophic error of judgement.

The Sun got off to a bad start yesterday when the incredible news broke of how police had doctored statements - thousands of them - to divert blame away from their own failings.

The Northern Echo: The Sun

While the rest of the industry's websites led on Hillsborough, The Sun's "Top story" was about a Twitter spat between Kerry Katona and her ex-husband. Eventually, it was overtaken by the Hillsborough story, together with a video apology by Dominic Mohan, which was a nice touch.

And I think The Sun has done a very decent job in print this morning. When I saw the front page on twitter last night - with the headline "The Real Truth" - I thought "fair enough".

I Tweeted to say I thought it was well done and there was plenty of reaction challenging that view. The apology - "We are profoundly sorry for false reports" - bullet-pointed in the bottom corner of the front page wasn't enough, said one respected journalist.

OK, but I think we have to remember what the main story was here. The real scandal is that police chiefs got away with the biggest cover-up in modern history for 23 years, despite government inquiries.

That has to be kept in perspective against an error of judgement by one man - albeit a huge error.

Today's Sun team were not to blame for what happened 23 years ago and their job was to report the main story, while accepting - prominently - the failure of its editor 23 years ago. I'm not sure Dominic Mohan could have done any more.

The real shocker was the loss of all news sense at The Daily Telegraph. To not have a paragraph on such an historic story anywhere on page one is incredible.

They presumably knew it was a big story because the headline declares "Hillsborough, the biggest cover-up in history" but you don't get there until page 6.

The final thought (for now) is how this whole sorry affair has acted as a reminder to editors of the need to challenge the secrecy of those in power.

Thousands of secret documents are now known to have been doctored and successive governments let them get away with it.

When governments, councils, and other public bodies, use flimsy excuses for avoiding transparency, we should remember what happened at Hillsborough - and be fundamentally sceptical.