20 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan told the Leveson Inquiry he does not believe phone hacking took place at the paper under his leadership.
Morgan said he had “no reason to believe” the practice was occurring at the tabloid. He added that he has never been made aware of any evidence of paying police officers while he was at the Daily Mirror.
He admitted private investigators were used “from time to time” at the redtop, but said he was “never directly involved”.
“Certainly all journalists knew they had to act within the confines of the law,” he said.
Morgan edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, as well as the News of the World from January 1994 to November 1995.
Speaking to the Inquiry via video link this afternoon, Morgan challenged former Mirror reporter James Hipwell’s written statement that phone hacking was so frequent it seemed like a “bog-standard journalistic tool”.
Morgan said that “not a single person has made a formal or legal complaint against the Daily Mirror for phone hacking.”
He added he did not believe he had ever listened to recordings of what he knew to be illegally obtained voicemail messages.
Being quizzed about his diary entry from January 2001, in which he referred to the “little trick” of being able to listen to mobile phone messages, Morgan said he could not remember who had made him aware of this method.
During questioning by counsel to the Inquiry, Robert Jay QC, Morgan admitted he had listened to a tape recording of a voicemail message from Sir Paul McCartney to Heather Mills, but declined to say how he obtained it so as not to “compromise” his source.
When asked if he was acting ethically, Morgan said, “it doesn’t necessarily follow that listening to someone else talking to someone else is unethical.”
Lord Justice Leveson said he was “perfectly happy” to call Mills to see whether she authorised Morgan to listen to her voicemail.
He was also asked why he said in an April 2007 interview that phone hacking was “widespread”. He replied that “the Fleet Street rumour mill, which is always very noisy and not always particularly accurate, was buzzing loudly”, adding that he felt Clive Goodman, the News of the World reporter jailed for phone hacking in the same year, was “made a scapegoat”.
“I feel sorry for him,” Morgan said.
Describing the industry, Morgan said that editors “know only 5 per cent of what their journalists are doing at any given time”, and that he had only “very occasionally” asked reporters about the sources of their stories.
He described victims’ lawyer David Sherborne’s assertion that he had learned of phone hacking through whistleblower Steven Nott as “absolute rubbish”. He said Sherborne was “massively self-inflating” the importance of the story, and that Nott was “slightly barking” and a leading a “psychotic campaign”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with Hipwell giving evidence.
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20 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The former TV editor of the News of the World has told the Leveson Inquiry how she “fell out of love” with the industry after being asked to write an untrue story about a celebrity being cheated on by her partner.
Sharon Marshall, now a television critic for ITV’s This Morning, said she could not stay on at the News of the World, stating she had been asked to breach the PCC code over the story. It involved a pregnant celebrity whose partner had allegedly been unfaithful, though Marshall discovered the photo evidence supplied was two years old.
“Morally, it wasn’t going to happen,” Marshall said of the story, which she refused to carry out. “I made sure I killed it.”
She then resigned from the paper despite being asked to stay on. The individual who asked her to write the story, she said, remained in their job.
She described the “tough” and competitive enviroment at the tabloid. “You literally didn’t know what the person next to you was doing.” She described editorial meetings with line managers where she would be asked what she had done to stand up a story, but not about sources.
She said she was “not involved in any direct conversation” in which she was asked to work unethically, adding that she did not see any evidence of unethical behaviour with vast majority of those she worked for.
She denied a bullying culture at the tabloids, but said that “some editors are less than idyllic.”
The Inquiry also heard extracts of Marshall’s book, Tabloid Girl, which detailed her career at the redtops. Lord Justice Leveson asked if the book was “a true story”, as its cover read. Marshall repeated that the text was filled with “heightened reality” and “a bit of topspin”.
“I was writing something somebody told me in the pub,” she told the Inquiry, adding that she did not have “hard evidence” for the stories because she was not “writing a witness statement.”
“I intended it to be a good yarn,” she said.
When Leveson questioned if “topspin” meant “lying”, Marshall said that she would call it “colour”. She later said one example of it was a part of the book in which she described how she “gatecrashed” celebrity weddings.
Another story she recounted involved her being asked to travel to Rhyl to find someone who would back up a kiss and tell story about a member of the band Steps. Marshall admitted an advert for the story, with the pre-ordained headline “My five, six, seven times a night with Steps girl”, was running before the story was written.
During a slightly tense back and forth between Marshall, Leveson and Inquiry counsel, David Barr, a defensive Marshall admitted she “shouldn’t have allowed” the book’s cover to read “a true story”, but repeated that the text involved “dramatisation”.
She concluded that the maxim her book ends with — “fuck the facts…just file” — was not one that the entire industry tabloid worked by. “It’s a few individuals,” she said. “Bad apples.”
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19 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A former News of the World sports reporter who received a bullying compensation settlement worth almost £800,000 has said his choice to take on his bosses “finished” his career.
Matt Driscoll, who was diagnosed with severe depression in 2006, told the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon he could not “imagine any editor wanting to snap me up tomorrow.”
“I am the guy who has taken on the bosses,” he said.
Driscoll worked on the paper’s sports desk from 1997 to 2007, when he was sacked. An employment tribunal found in 2009 that the paper had discriminated against him on grounds of his disability and that the editor had presided over a culture of bullying at the redtop. He was awarded £792,736 in compensation.
He said his illness was “entirely” due to the treatment of the News of the World, and noted his doctor had advised he “distance” himself from the paper. Driscoll described receiving daily calls from the paper and being told his pay would be stalled if he sought advice from an independent doctor rather than a company nurse.
Driscoll had received a tip that Arsenal football club would play in a claret-coloured strip, though the team dismissed the claim. Some months later the story appeared in the Sun. “I received a phone call from my sports editor to say ‘we’re dead’,” Driscoll said.
He said “power corrupts” some editors, with their egos allowed to “run wild” and that some had “lost touch with reality”.
“Editors were under even more pressure than proprietors to make sure their readership stayed at a certain level,” he added. “That pressure passed down.”
Of journalism, he said, “you work at a certain level of stress but you are almost at saturation point.”
He said he had no direct involvement with phone hacking, but added that “it was known throughout the whole of Fleet Street that news reporters or feature writers could obtain mobile phone messages.”
He said any suggestion of stories being fabricated at the paper were “absolutely crazy”, claiming the litigation costs would be too high to risk.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, and will include evidence from Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror and the News of the World, who’ll be appearing via satellite; the paper’s former TV editor Sharron Marshall; Farrer & Co partner Julian Pike, and Steve Turner, who represented Matt Driscoll during his tribunal.
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19 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The older brother of ex-News of the World reporter Sean Hoare has told the Leveson Inquiry that phone hacking was taken from the Sun to the now defunct tabloid.
Stuart Hoare said he had exchanged a series of emails with his late brother in which he had revealed practice was “routine” at the Sun before being “taken” to its Sunday equivalent, where it occurred “more daily”.
“The idea that it was a secret had him [Sean] rocking in his chair,” Hoare said. “Everyone was at it.”
Sean Hoare, who died in July, was interviewed by the New York Times in 2010 about phone hacking at the News of the World.
Also speaking today, deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday James Hanning said that Sean Hoare had told him he had hacked phones “numerous times”, as had several of his colleagues at the News of the World.
“Sean didn’t realise at the time he was probably doing wrong,” Hoare said. “He got carried away like a lot of journalists, and was certainly under a lot of pressure from seniors to deliver.”
Hanning disagreed with Stuart Hoare’s assertion that the paper’s newsdesk was out of control. “It seems to me it was known what was going on.”
In his witness statement Hoare said his brother had regarded drug taking as “part of his job” and was “easily led” into a culture of drinking. “He came close to a lot of celebrities and got a lot of information that benfited him and his employer,” he told the Inquiry.
Sean Hoare was asked by a senior member of staff to leave the News of the World in 2005. “His world fell apart,” his brother said said. “I can’t tell you how much Sean enjoyed journalism.”
He added that, in his last two years at the paper, Sean had been “struggling” due to pressure placed on him and other reporters to produce stories. “He was bringing his work home, he was drinking more,” Hoare said.
“It upsets me the amount of pressure these journalists at the News of the World were out under to deliver stories,” Hoare added. “To see the demise of my brother through this was shocking.”
Hanning also alluded to the “very tough” redtop market, noting that “if you don’t perform, you tend not to thrive.”
Hoare concluded that he “found it very difficult” not to name names, adding that those involved “know the wrong they have done.”
“I am trying to put some of the wrongs to rights on Sean’s behalf,” he said.
The inquest into Hoare’s death in November concluded he had died of natural causes, with the coroner citing alcoholic liver disease.
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