Call for CNN interviewer to face hacking probe
Source: Agencies |
August 5, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
NEWS organization CNN's star interviewer Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor, faced calls yesterday to return to the UK to tell what he knows about the phone-hacking scandal - though a key parliamentary committee said it will not demand he testify.
Heather Mills, the ex-wife of Paul McCartney, this week accused newspaper group Trinity Mirror of accessing her voicemail messages in 2001 - an allegation that threatens to widen the scope of the hacking inquiries beyond Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
Mills told the BBC that a senior Trinity Mirror journalist, not Morgan, had acknowledged her voicemail was accessed and had quoted to her a message left by McCartney after the couple had argued. She has not disclosed which of the group's newspapers she alleges carried out the hacking.
Morgan edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, and has denied any involvement in phone hacking.
However, Morgan's opponents point to a 2006 article in the Daily Mail in which he claimed to be have heard a tape of a message McCartney left on Mills's mobile phone. Morgan wrote: "He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."
In a 2009 interview with BBC Radio 4, Morgan also suggested most UK newspapers had engaged in shady practices. He told the BBC: "I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market."
Conservative MP Therese Coffey, a member of the Parliamentary committee examining phone hacking, said Morgan should return to London to assist the investigation.
She told the BBC's Newsnight program: "It would help everybody, including himself and this investigation, if he was able to say more about why he wrote what he did in 2006."
Heather Mills, the ex-wife of Paul McCartney, this week accused newspaper group Trinity Mirror of accessing her voicemail messages in 2001 - an allegation that threatens to widen the scope of the hacking inquiries beyond Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
Mills told the BBC that a senior Trinity Mirror journalist, not Morgan, had acknowledged her voicemail was accessed and had quoted to her a message left by McCartney after the couple had argued. She has not disclosed which of the group's newspapers she alleges carried out the hacking.
Morgan edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, and has denied any involvement in phone hacking.
However, Morgan's opponents point to a 2006 article in the Daily Mail in which he claimed to be have heard a tape of a message McCartney left on Mills's mobile phone. Morgan wrote: "He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."
In a 2009 interview with BBC Radio 4, Morgan also suggested most UK newspapers had engaged in shady practices. He told the BBC: "I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market."
Conservative MP Therese Coffey, a member of the Parliamentary committee examining phone hacking, said Morgan should return to London to assist the investigation.
She told the BBC's Newsnight program: "It would help everybody, including himself and this investigation, if he was able to say more about why he wrote what he did in 2006."
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