CNN star Piers Morgan faces questions over past

[Liberal_in_LA]

CNN star Piers Morgan may be known to Americans as an empathetic English interviewer, but it's his past at the heart of Britain's troubled tabloid newspaper world that is being trotted out before the cameras this week.

The often colorful and sometimes controversial story of Morgan's rise to the top will be revisited Tuesday, when the former editor appears by videolink at a judge-led inquiry into the ethics and practices of Britain's scandal-tarred press.

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Morgan shot to national prominence when he was picked by Murdoch to run the News of the World at age 28. Under his tenure the tabloid exposed actor Hugh Grant's liaison with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown and Princess Diana's late-night phone calls to married art dealer Oliver Hoare. It wasn't all down to good reporting: Morgan has acknowledged he kept his edge in part through bribes paid to informants on rival titles.

In 1995 Morgan left the News of the World for the Daily Mirror. His time there was marked by scoops and controversy, but his editorship ended in 2004 when he ran a faked photograph purporting to show a British soldier urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/18/international/i044246S41.DTL


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/18/international/i044246S41.DTL#ixzz1gvoTOwY7

[Enrique]

1. I found out about this a while ago

I had been neutral toward him, as soon as I found out about that stuff I thought what a scumbag, how could CNN possibly hire him and how could no one there resign in protest?

Has Howie Kurtz said anything about the hire?

Is there anyone else on TV with such a sleazy past (outside of Fox News, of course, which is headed by Roger Ailes)?

[sabrina 1]

3. A tabloid journalist on CNN? Considering the state of our media

it's probably a good fit as CNN continues to try to outdo Fox.

They probably hired him because of his American Idol fame and after the discovery of Susan Boyle on the British version, he got a lot of media attention here.

She made him famous actually and it's doubtful CNN even bothered to look into his past. Although I'm sure they knew he was a Tabloid Journalist who worked for Murdoch.

Ted Turner never should have sold CNN.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

11. You can say that again.

Ted Turner messed up the world when he did that.

[Whisp]

2. interesting stuff!

Skeletons have already begun peeking out of the closet.

Critics have been picking through old interviews and his autobiography "The Insider," in which Morgan makes clear he knew of phone hacking as long ago as 2001.

Interviewed by supermodel Naomi Campbell for GQ magazine before the scandal over the practice boiled over, Morgan said he couldn't get too upset over hacking because "loads of newspaper journalists were doing it."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3716151.stm
here is the story on his faked iraq picture. What a scum! and he ended up at CNN with That resumé?
Figures

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. More of Morgan's shady past: a share scam

Private Eye reports that there were some strange omissions from the ITV interview that Lord Sugar gave to Piers Morgan before Morgan headed off to present a new show on CNN.

Apparently, whenever Morgan asked Sugar a question he didn't want to answer, Sugar said the word "Viglen". That, of course, is the name of Sugar's computer company, coincidentally the company that almost got Morgan into a lot of trouble.

In January 2000, when he was Mirror editor, he bought £20,000 of Viglen shares. The following day the Mirror's City Slickers column told readers to buy Viglen shares. In the controversy that followed, the City Slickers writers Anil Bhoyrul and James Hipwell were sacked. Bhoyrul was evenutally sentenced to community service and Hipwell went to jail, but Morgan was not prosecuted.

Read more: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/computeractive-blog/1938629/piers-morgans-viglen#ixzz1gvthiRc4

[Bluenorthwest]

5. I consider him to be an incarnate demon of some sort

An unethical and talentless man.

[Whisp]

6. wonder how Piers is feeling today...

and will he be as interruptive and dismissive as he is to his guests?

hmmm

[UTUSN]

7. R#7 & K n/t

[Whisp]

8. kick

[Whisp]

9. link for more background story here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16216085

[alittlelark]

10. He's just over-all creepy. I was shocked when cnn hired him

WTF?

[Whisp]

12. update:

http://ca.eonline.com/news/piers_morgan_tries_fails_extricate/281980

Piers Morgan Tries, Fails to Extricate Himself From U.K. Phone-Hacking Scandal

Well this doesn't look good.

Testifying before a government inquiry today in Great Britain about his alleged involvement in the phone hacking scandal, CNN talk-show host Piers Morgan didn't do himself any favors when he refused to answer questions about the illegal activities said to have occurred on his watch as the editor of the Daily Mail between 1995 and 2004.

"I have no reason...to believe [hacking] was going on," he told the London-based panel via video link.

...
...

But he declined to reveal who played the tape for him or how he even came to hear it on the grounds that "it would compromise a source."
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BURN MUDDERFUCKER, BURN!