UK Blog Charges that Phone Hacking Occured at ‘Daily Mirror’ Under Editor Piers Morgan

[RamboLiberal]

A U.K. political blog alleges that phone hacking was not contained to News Corp.’s News of the World, and that News competitor The Daily Mirror also engaged in the practice. The editor of the Mirror at the time? Piers Morgan, now a primetime host on CNN.

The Guido Fawkes blog, led by libertarian blogger Paul Staines, charges that Morgan was aware that at least one scoop was obtained by hacking a celebrity’s voicemail, but decided to publish it anyway, in an effort to revive the brand of the paper’s gossip column:

The paper’s editor at the time, one Piers Morgan, was receiving flak for the fact that his 3AM Girls gossip section was dire rubbish and lacked any bite compared to Morgan’s old Bizarre column in News International’s Sun. Morgan decided to let 3AMGirl Jessica Callan break the illegally obtained story under her byline in order to try and rid the column of its banal reputation.

The parent company of The Daily Mirror responded to the then rumors a few days ago, saying “Trinity Mirror’s position is clear. Our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct.”



http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/uk-blog-charges-that-phone-hacking-occured-at-daily-mirror-under-editor-piers-morgan_b76024

Good - get rid of him too!

[pennylane100]

1. He was also an editor of The News Of The World

Hope that comes back to bite him in the butt.

[joeybee12]

2. Color me skeptical...

Interesting how someone is trying to move the focus away from murdoch's empire.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Yeah, we said that back in April

realistically, this was not limited to Murdoch's papers; for instance, Piers Morgan, now pulling in the dosh as a CNN chat show host, boasted to his workers when he was the Mirror editor that he knew exactly what messages had been left on some celebrity's voicemail

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x844551

I can't remember where I read about his boasting - probably Private Eye magazine (not online). Guido Fawkes is not saying anything new here.

On edit: Here's the piece I saw - someone else put it online (from Private Eye 1281, 4 Feb 2011)

Screws hacks have been chuckling over the hysterical TV interviews and Tweets in which two previous editors, Phil Hall and Piers “Morgan” Moron, try to defend Andy Coulson and accuse the Guardian of running a “witch-hunt.” What might be revealed by close scrutiny of their own records? Any exposure of dubious methods wouldn’t exactly help their new careers. Hall has gone from poacher to gatekeeper, with a new career as a celebrity PR, and has already been embarrassed by his nephew, a Screws hack in the Coulson era, admitting that he transcribed hacked messages for sleazy Neville Thurlbeck, then as now the paper’s chief reporter.

Moron, meanwhile, is enjoying the limelight as a celeb interviewer on cable TV. Former Mirror hacks have this week been reminiscing about the occasion when Moron serenaded their newsroom with the Beatles song “And I Love Her” during a period of pre-wedding froideur between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, and then informed them that “It’s the message he sang to Heather to make it up — you should hear the tape.”

http://www.matthewcharlesdavis.com/2011/02/14/you-should-hear-the-tape/

And in Private Eye 1283, 4 March 2011, Private Eye talked about hacking, the Mirror, the NotW, and the Jonsson/Eriksson affair:

Lawyers for the former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who was turned over by the tabloids for his affairs with Ulrika Jonsson and Faria Alam, have asked Scotland Yard if his name and mobile phone details appear in the stash of documents seized from the jailed News of the World snooper Glenn Mulcaire.

The Mirror won Scoop of the Year at the 2003 British Press Awards for revealing Sven's fling with Ulrika, but even at the time there were questions about where the story had come from. For one thing, it was credited to the 3am Girls, who duly collected the prize, even though it was showbiz hack James Scott who received the tip-off. For another, the then Screws editrix Rebekah Wade had been staking out Ulrika for days and planned to devote her first eight pages to the affair until Piers Moron's Mirror beat her to it.

Rebekah set up an internal investigation to discover if (as she suspected) a disgruntle Screws hack had leaked the story to the Mirror, but it was inconclusive. There was, however, no investigation into the original provenance of the Screws' information. Another case for Inspector Knacker, perhaps?

[Snoutport]

6. thanks! hadn't seen some of this!

[WhiteTara]

4. kicking for the scum to float to the top.

:kick:

[librechik]

5. hope this shortens your shitty tenure on the larry King Show

or whatever they are calling it now on Faux Fox/CNN

[geardaddy]

7. Morgan seems like a creep.

I watched him sneer at Ricky Gervais for being an atheist. So, I can't stomach his show.