9:24AM GMT 21 Dec 2011
• Piers Morgan describes listening to Heather Mills' voicemail
• Ex-Mirror editor denies his journalists hacked phones
• News International settles claims of seven public figures
• Payout to July 7 hero Paul Dadge
• Rupert Murdoch could be called as a witness
• Emails suggest Murdoch discussed phone hacking in May 2008
• Watch the
Leveson Inquiry testimony live here
Latest
Here is Piers Morgan on the subject of Ulrika Jonsson:
And here he is discussing Heather Mills:
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17:19 Morgan finished with a flourish, telling Lord Justice Leveson, unabashed:
It has gone how I thought it would, which is always like a rock star having
an album brought out of his back catalogue of all his worst ever hits... I
do think there has to be a bit of balance here because a lot of the very
good things which the newspaper did at that time and continues to do are not
being highlighted here at all.
17:14 Morgan has dismissed Steven Nott, a lorry driver who went to the Mirror with a story about how phones could be hacked, as “one sandwich short of a picnic”.
He said it was ludicrous to suggest the paper had "supressed" the story so that it could use the technique.
“This was a complete non event I knew nothing about this it was never going to be a big story for the Mirror,” he said
17:10 And that's it. Oh wait, Morgan wants to have a last word.... and he's comparing himself to a "rock star".
17:07 Morgan appears to be getting more relaxed. Perhaps to be expected as the questions are getting more blunt.
17:02 Robert Jay QC has hinted that Rupert Murdoch will be called to give evidence. Asking Morgan about a conversation he had with the News Corporation chief in 1995, he remarked: ”We can ask him for his recollection when we get there.”
Morgan suggested that Murdoch "couldn’t give a toss about” the Press Complaints Commision.
He said he referred to it as...
that press complaining thingamagig.
17:00 Whichever way you look at it, the questioners have not managed to pin Morgan down on anything meaningful. Although the tone of voice has been tough, the ferreting for information has not. Morgan has been able to handle everything thrown at him so far.
16:54 The former editor describes doctoring a picture of Diana, Princess of Wales, to make it look like she was kissing as a “very silly” thing to do.
But he said the paper did not “con” the public because it was not alone in doing so, as it came during the advent of digital photography, the use of which newspapers were still coming to grips.
But on celebrity privacy in general he said:
My view of celebrities and privacy is that it really depends how much
privacy you are entitled to if you yourself use your privacy for financial
gain. I have very little sympathy with celebrities who sell their wedding
photographs for example.
16:46 Morgan says he “absolutely” stands by his decision to sent Ryan Parry, the reporter, to work as a footman in the palace, saying it exposed a “massive” security breach.
Suggesting that the Royal Family owed their lives to him, saying:
Rather us than a terrorist
Asked if he thought it was in the public interest, he replied: “Absolutely... we exposed a huge series of loopholes in the security around senior members of the Royal Family which had we not exposed it they might not be here today."
16:43 Morgan a hair's breadth from suggesting that the Royal Family should thank him for exposing the security breach that allowed a Mirror reporter to get a job at Buckingham Palace rather than a terrorist.
16:39 Morgan has admitted that he bought £67,000 of shares in Viglen, more than three times as many as the PCC thought.
But he insisted: “I told Trinity Mirror exactly how many shares I had bought.”
16:37 For the record, CNN are now showing Morgan's evidence.
16:33 Morgan, who was investigated over insider trading, described his fellow Mirror employee James Hipwell, who was sacked for the alleged offence, as a "convicted criminal".
This summer, Hipwell claimed that phone hacking was "endemic" under Morgan's editorship.
Hipwell was jailed in 2006 for conspiracy to breach the Financial Services Act as part of the "City Slickers" share tipping scandal. Morgan was not found guilty of any crime.
Hipwell is expected to give evidence to the inquiry tomorrow.
16:31 Morgan has repeatedly insisted he did not usually press his reporters for the source of their stories.
Jay: "Are you seeking to distance yourself from sources because the sources we are talking about are the fruits of phone hacking?"
Morgan: "No."
16:30 Interesting phrasing from Morgan on the pressure he put on staff to bring in exclusive stories. He says it was the "convention" to deliver them but denies it was unacceptable pressure. However, he admits to being happy to "put a rocket up their collective backsides".
16:22 Lord Justice Leveson says he is “perfectly happy” to call Heather Mills to ask how Morgan came to hear her message from Paul McCartney.
Without saying how he heard it, Morgan added that it had emerged from the McCartney’s divorce settlement that she was suspected of recording their conversations and playing them to journalists.
16:20 For those who like those sorts of things, the Huffington Post has compiled a list of jokes about Morgan's appearance.
16:18 In 2006 Morgan wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which he openly referred to having heard a message Sir Paul McCartney left on his then wife Heather Mills's voicemail.
At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on
her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff,
Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He
sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out'
into the answer phone.
Morgan, when pushed, refused to describe listening to such a voicemail as “unethical”.
16:15 Asked if he ever listened to illegally obtained messages, he said: “I do not believe so.”
The questioners appear to be struggling slightly to pin Morgan down and get him to disclose the origin of a recording about Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. They suggest Mrs Mills could be invited to give evidence and asked whether he had her permission. Morgan says he will "not go into any details about the source" as it could compromise that source.
16:12 Morgan says that, at the time of Clive Goodman’s arrest in 2006
The Fleet Street rumour mill, which is always extremely noisy and not
entirely accurate, was buzzing with rumours that it spread a lot further
than Clive Goodman. I do think he was made a scapegoat and, having known him
at the News of The World, I felt sorry for him.
16:09 For those who wish to review Morgan's appearance on Desert Island Discs, which has been discussed during his evidence, it is here. Thanks to @jonronson for that.
16:06 Morgan has repeatedly denied that his Daily Mirror journalists were involved in phone hacking but told the inquiry “we now know” that The Guardian was.
He was asked about an entry in his diary from Jan 26 2001 in which he speaks about how phones can be hacked and wonders whether celebrities know about “this little trick”.
Asked by Mr Jay who had told him about the “trick”, he said: “I have no idea, I’m sorry, it was 10 years ago and I can’t remember.”
Later he defended an article he wrote for Press Gazette in 2007 describing Clive Goodman as a “convenient fall guy for” a widespread practice.
He said: "That was the rumour mill at the time - it was exploding around Fleet Street. Everyone you spoke to said he was being made a scapegoat that it was a widely prevalent thing.”
16:04 Oddly, the BBC is showing Morgan's evidence in its "Democracy Live" section. Watchers are wondering if Morgan merits such a billing.
16:01 In a niche development among those watching Morgan's evidence Evian is now trending on Twitter.
15:53 Piers Morgan is trending hugely on Twitter, with many bizarre observations, including that the light above him looks like a halo, that he is remarkably central to the screen and framed by bottles of particularly well-placed Evian and that he appears to be in a prison cell.
15:41 Morgan admits that his paper’s use of “Benjy the Binman” who riffled through celebrities’ bins looking for information was “on the cusp” of unethical.
But he accuses The Guardian “who have appointed themselves the Bishops of Fleet Street” of hypocrisy.
15:49 Morgan confirms that the Daily Mirror used private investigators under him.
But he says he never had any confirmed:
I don’t, because I was never directly involved this was dealt with through the
news desk or the features desk but certainly the journalists all knew they
had to operate within the law so I never had any concerns
15.43 Morgan says that the Press Complaints Commission code was central to his ethics from the start. He says that in 1996 he was handed a leaked copy of the Budget but chose not to publish fearing market chaos.
15.37 Sitting at the head of a table in an echo-filled office in the US, Piers Morgan is looking relaxed as he fields the opening questions. Asked by Robert Jay QC whether it was correct that his CNN programme was popular in the US, he smiled as he told him: "It has cleraly passed you by Mr Jay."
Combative from the outset, he told him it was "pompous" to suggest who write celebrity stories could not handle hard news and shrugged as he said it was a "moot point" whether his books are an accurate historical document.
1534 Piers Morgan sworn in.
1523 The inquiry has adjourned for 10 minutes before it hears from Piers Morgan.
1520 Lord Justice Leveson has been given a stark warning about the threat to local journalism. Matthew Bell, head of the Kent-based press agency Ferrari’s told him that a shortage of cash was squeezing Fleet Street's traditonal training ground.
Unfortunately local newspapers are being driven to the ground. The type of
people we recruit are becoming fewer and fewer.
15.13 Mark Oaten, the former Liberal Democrat MP, who was one of the seven people who agreed out-of-court settlements with News International over phone hacking, says he received a "substantial" payout.
He said:
I'm glad, after a long period, this issue is finally resolved and I'm able to
understand better the actions taken against me by the media.
I'm grateful to the current team at News International for trying to put wrongs right and settle this honourably.
1502 Chris Johnson, who runs Liverpool-based Mercury Press, said that the hacking scandal at the News of The World had had a devastating effect on the standing of the media as a whole.
He likened it to the unfair way in which Catholic priests have been affected by child abuse scandals involving a tiny minority.
He said:
All journalists are getting tarred with the same brush.”
1441 The two press agency owners have drawn an important distinction between press photographers and the “unfettered unbridled unregulated” paparazzi.
Both are office holders in the National Association of Press Agencies which administers the issuing of official press cards for agency reporters and handles complaints.
Mr Johnson suggested that in future people applying for a press card could be criminal record checked.
1435 The heads of two major regional press agencies have been telling Lord Justice Leveson about their role in the national media.
Matthew Bell, the co-owner of Ferrari’s agency in Kent, and Chris Johnson, who runs Liverpool-based Mercury Press, said that their work had changed with a much bigger emphasis on celebrity stories than in the past.
Mr Johnson agreed that the emphasis was now “skewed” in favour of celebrity stories.
14.00 Fresh emails have emerged from News International suggesting that James Murdoch was aware of discussions leading up to a £700,000 settlement over phone hacking as early as May 2008 – two weeks before a crucial meeting at which the extent of the allegations was discussed.
The Commons Culture Media and Sport committee released two new messages sent to the News International chief’s personal email account in May and June 2008.
One dated May 27 2008, shows that the News of The World editor Colin Myler was asking to see Mr Murdoch that day. A few moments later he replied: "OK".
It was sent 10 days before Mr Murdoch received a further sequences of emails referring to the case brought by Gordon Taylor, the head of the footballers’ union, the PFA, and warning: "it is as bad as we feared".
Mr Murdoch admitted he had received - but not opened - alluding to the scale of phone hacking at the paper on June 7. Three days later he had a meeting with Mr Myler and Tom Crone, the paper's legal chief, where they discussed the case and, the inquiry has been told, the wider allegations.
A second message sent by Mr Crone on June 18 told of Mr Taylor’s anger and discussed a possible personal meeting with Mr Myler.
13.30 News International has settled cases brought by seven people whose mobile phones were hacked by the News of The World.
They are Ulrika Jonsson, Abi Titmuss, Michelle Milburn, James Hewitt, Calum Best and Mark Oaten.
Paul Dadge, the July 7 attacks hero, was also targeted by phone hackers. The company is reported to be paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds.
13.27 Speaking on Sky News, Max Clifford, the publicist, has predicted a slick performance by Piers Morgan at the Leveson Inquiry later. The former Daily Mirror editor is giving evidence by video link from the US this afternoon.
Piers is a good operator, he knows his subject and piers knows what’s coming
to him so I would be very surprised if the inquiry caused him too many
problems this afternoon.
13.17 Concluding her evidence Sharon Marshall, the former TV Editor of the News of The World, insisted that only "a few bad apples" were responsible for the worst excesses of the tabloid press.
1313 She has been telling the inquiry that she knew that phone hacking, blagging of medical records and pulling private mobile was going on.
She said that one international celebrity had even put a message on her mobile phone saying: “And will you b----- journalists stop hacking into my f------ phone.”
Lord Justice Leveson asked her about a passage in her book Tabloid Girl in which she wrote: “Every journalist who has ever worked on any tabloid will know exactly how to do it and exactly which codes to use.”
She told him:
Every journalist who has ever worked on any tabloid will know how to do it
which codes to use. That isn’t saying that they all did it.
12.50 Earlier she gave the inquiry a gimpse into some of the tactics and tricks employed by tabloid reporters.
In one anecdote she said that she had been sent to check Simon Cowell's bathroom cupboards for hair dye while visiting him for an interview. She says she went on to check Cowell's cupboards for "high waisted trousers", with his permission.
Earlier she said that one story in her semi-fictionalised book Tabloid Girl about a reporter laughing with colleagues in a pub about how Hugh Grant had allegedly chased him across some muddy fields was based on truth.
But she said:
I don’t think that should be taken as an indication that it was a sport.
12.20 Sharon Marshall has been telling the inquiry about how she was once dispatched by an editor to find out whether Banbury in Oxfordshire was a hotbed of “lust” by finding a local male prostitute.
Her book recounts a fictonalised conversation in which an editor declares: “Find me a hooker there who says he regularly services the lusty ladies of Banbury”
She confirmed that the story was true but she had failed to find one.
To laughter, she admitted:
I’m fairly inept at hiring hookers.
12.01 Sharon Marshall, the former TV Editor of the News of The World, is now being cross-examined on how she says she “blagged” her way into a live filming of an episode of Friends in London.
It enabled her to find out about a plot line in which Sir Richard Branson was to play a cameo role as a hat salesman.
11.50 A clash of cultures at the inquiry: lawyers, including Lord Justice Leveson, have been trying to get to grips with whether a satirical book can be treated as true.
Sharon Marshall, the former TV Editor of the News of The World, has been faced with a barrage of questions about how literally her semi-autobiographical novel Tabloid Girl can be taken.
In some exasperation, she explained:
I was writing a comedy, I was not writing a legal document.
11.39 Here is a clip of Steve Turner, the general secretary of the alternative journalists' union the BAJ, telling the inquiry that News of The World staff were "wage slaves":
11.22 Sharon Marshall, the former TV editor of the News of the World, has told the inquiry how she quit the paper after being asked to do a story she knew was not true.
She said that she was asked to tell a female celebrity, who was pregnant, that her partner was cheating on her and that there was a photograph. In fact the picture was two years old. She says she refused to put to the women and “killed the story” before resigning.
This was an occasion where morally I was not going to let it happened.
1110 Tom Watson, the Labour MP and prominent critic of News international, is expecting Sharon Marshall's evidence to be lively:
1101 Sharon Marshall, the former TV editor of the News of the World and now resident soap expert on ITV1's This Morning, is giving evidence. She has outlined how she worked in Fleet Street for a decade.
She says at the News of The World, “byline was everything”, pressure was intense and that secrecy was paramount.
You literally wouldn’t know about what the person next to you was working on.
10.55 BREAKING NEWS:
Elsewhere at the Royal Courts of Justice a High Court judge has heard that the former England footballer Paul Gascoigne's phone-hacking claim is close to being settled.
Jeremy Reed, who represents various claimants in the News of the World phone-hacking cases, made the annoncement during a short hearing before Mr Justice Vos.
Gascoigne's action was one of the "lead" cases for a trial which is being held early next year.
10.50 Steve Turner, general secretary of the alternative journalists' union the BAJ, has outlined a number of cases in which he alleges journalists were forced to make up stories. He said that one senior executive once told a reporter:
I don't want a story about a bent policeman I want a story about a whole bent
police force.
10.38 Meanwhile, the National Union of Journalists has explained how Derek Webb, a private investigator, was allowed to join the union – allowing him to describe himself as a journalist while carrying out surveillance for the News of The World.
This emerged last week at the inquiry during the following News of The World editor Colin Myler’s evidence.
The union’s general secretary Michelle Stanistreet says:
We have been consistently transparent about what is an extraordinary case
where a private detective was instructed by a senior executive of News
International to pretend to be a journalist and to make an application on
that basis to join the NUJ, a union that has been blocked from the titles
for a generation.
10.29 Speaking about the case of Matt Driscoll case, the former sports reporter at the News of the World, which was aired at the inquiry yesterday, Mr Turner has described staff at the News of The World as "wage slaves".
He says staff at the News of The World sometimes faced “phoney” allegations designed to force them out of their jobs and pressure to accept a pay off.
Mr Driscoll suffered a nervous breakdown after a dispute with management at the paper.
He says it was “not uncommon” for people to suffer nervous breakdowns after being “terrorized”.
“We are living in a society where people are wage slaves and treated very
badly and that’s the circumstance I found at the News of The World.”
10.20 Steve Turner has told the inquiry that it was hinted to him that phone hacking was common in Fleet Street because of pressure to produce more “exciting and revelatory” stories while cutting costs.
He says that two over-rising factors ratcheting up the pressure over the past 25 years were falling circulation and pressure to maximize profits.
“There was the pressure on some journalists to cut corners,” he said.
“I don’t know anything to concretely say that this has been happening in this company or that company.”
He also says that bullying is rife in newsrooms.
10.12 Steve Turner, general secretary of the British Association of Journalists, is now giving evidence. The BAJ represents staff at some newspapers where the main union, the NUJ, is not recognised.
10.00 Mystery over how News International knew that actress Sienna Miller was bringing an action against the company over the hacking of her phone weeks before she actually lodged it is back under scrutiny as Solicitor Julian Pike, of Farrer and Co, is recalled.
This relates to a sequence during Mr Pike’s evidence last week in which he was unable to explain how paperwork from June 2008 listed Miss Miller’s name among celebrities bringing legal action over phone hacking.
Mr Pike has checked his records and returned to explain that lawyers had been notified by the police in May 2008 of a possible action.
09.45 Morgan is bound to be asked about a 2006 article he wrote in the Daily Mail in which he openly referred to havnig heard a message Sir Paul McCartney left on his then wife Heather Mills's voicemail.
He explained:
At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her
mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff,
Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He
sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out'
into the answer phone.
09.20 Before Piers Morgan the inquiry will hear from Sharon Marshall, former TV editor of the News of the World and now resident soap expert on ITV1's This Morning. The important, but often unseen, influence of regional press agencies on the British media will also be in the spotlight with Matthew Bell, the co-owner of Ferrari’s agency in Kent, and Chris Johnson, who runs Liverpool-based Mercury Press, due to appear.
09.15 With six witnesses lined up to give evidence today most of the attention will almost inevitably be focused on just one: Piers Morgan, the former tabloid editor turned US talkshow host.
More used to sitting in judgment of others on television talent shows, Morgan will find himself facing some tough questions.
Although he was the youngest ever editor of the News of The World, his time at the Daily Mirror will be high on the inquiry’s radar. His tenure was brought to an abrupt end in 2004 when the paper published incendiary photographs appearing to show British soldiers abusing an Iraqi detainee. They were quickly established as fakes.
The City Slickers share tipping scandal is also bound to resurface. Morgan bought £20,000 worth of shares in the technology company Viglen the day before the paper’s City column tipped them for readers. Two journalists went to jail but Morgan kept his job.
But questions over phone hacking itself could take centre stage.
Morgan insisted in a statement in August:
I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my
knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone.
A series of public remarks about the issue – and at least one section in his own biography – would appear to call that into question.
08.30 Welcome back to our rolling coverage of the fifth week of the Leveson Inquiry, live from the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
The public inquiry into journalistic ethics was launched in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that engulfed News International in July and August.
For full coverage of the events leading up to the inquiry, visit our Leveson Inquiry and phone hacking archives.
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