Somebody at Loose Women is a genius. Here’s the reason
Think about it:
Pertinent question: Piers Morgan.
For information, from Wikipedia:
During Morgan’s tenure as editor, the Daily Mirror was advised by Steven Nott that voicemail interception was possible by means of a standard PIN code. Despite staff initially expressing enthusiasm for the story it did not appear in the paper, although it did subsequently feature in a South Wales Argus article and on BBC Radio 5 Live in October 1999. On 18 July 2011 Nott was visited by officers of Operation Weeting.[97]
He came under criticism for his “boasting” about phone hacking from Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who has since apologised for these accusations.[98]
In July 2011, in a sequence of articles, the political blogger Paul Staines alleged that while editor of the Daily Mirror in 2002 Morgan published a story concerning the affair of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Ulrika Jonsson while knowing it to have been obtained by phone hacking.[99]
On 20 December 2011, Morgan was a witness by satellite link from the United States at the Leveson Inquiry.[100] While he said he had no reason to believe that phone hacking had occurred at the Mirror while he was in charge there, he admitted to hearing a recording of an answerphone message left by Paul McCartney for Heather Mills, but refused to “discuss where that tape was played or who made [it] – it would compromise a source.”[100] Appearing as a witness at the same Inquiry on 9 February 2012, Mills was asked under oath if she had ever made a recording of Paul McCartney’s phone call or had played it to Piers Morgan; she replied: “Never”.[101][102] She said that she had never authorised Morgan, or anybody, to access or listen to her voicemails.[101] Mills told the inquiry that Morgan, “a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years”, would have relished telling the inquiry if she had played a personal voicemail message to him.[102]
On 23 May 2012, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman was a witness at the Leveson Inquiry. He recalled a lunch with the Mirror editor in September 2002 at which Morgan outlined the means of hacking into a mobile phone.[103]
On 28 November 2012, the Channel 4 documentary Taking on the Tabloids, fronted by actor and phone hacking victim Hugh Grant, showed footage from a 2003 interview with Morgan by the singer and phone hacking victim Charlotte Church, during which he explained to her how to avoid answerphone messages being listened to by journalists. He said: “You can access … voicemails by typing in a number. Now, are you really telling me that journalists aren’t going to do that?”[104][105]
On 29 November 2012, the official findings of the Leveson Inquiry were released, in which Lord Justice Leveson said that Morgan’s testimony under oath on phone hacking was “utterly unpersuasive”. He stated: “[The] evidence does not establish that [Morgan] authorised the hacking of voicemails or that journalists employed by TMG [Trinity Mirror Group] were indulging in this practice … What it does, however, clearly prove is that he was aware that it was taking place in the press as a whole and that he was sufficiently unembarrassed by what was criminal behaviour that he was prepared to joke about it.”[3][106]
On 6 December 2013, Morgan was interviewed, under caution, by police officers from Operation Weeting investigating phone hacking allegations at Mirror Group Newspapers during his tenure as editor.[107]
On 24 September 2014, the Trinity Mirror publishing group admitted for the first time that some of its journalists had been involved in phone hacking and agreed to pay compensation to four people who sued for the alleged hacking of voicemails.[108][109] Six other phone-hacking claims had already been settled. The BBC reported that it had seen legal papers showing that although the alleged hacking could have taken place as early as 1998, the bulk of the alleged wrongdoing took place in the early 2000s when Morgan was the Daily Mirroreditor.[110] The admissions by Trinity Mirror came whilst the London Metropolitan Police investigation into the phone hacking allegations was ongoing. Morgan has always denied any involvement in the practice.[110]
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