TalkTV
Piers Morgan is once again facing questions over his involvement in phone hacking in a Supreme Court case involving Prince Harry and other celebrities.
On the first day of a trial against The Daily Mirror, the British tabloid that published Morgan for nearly a decade, it was claimed he “must have known about the illegal voicemail tapping”. Morgan has always denied any knowledge of phone hacking at the Mirror, which he edited from 1995 to 2004.
The trial has reignited the phone hacking debate in the UK, more than a decade after Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World newspaper over revelations of illegal activity.
The Supreme Court was told that Morgan, a presenter on Murdoch’s TalkTV and Fox News, spoke openly about phone hacking to colleagues at Mirror Group Newspapers’ premises, according to The Guardian.
Former Mirror political editor David Seymour told the court how Morgan played reporters a voicemail from Paul McCartney in which the Beatles star tried to mend his relationship with then-girlfriend Heather Mills by saying “And I Love Her.” ” sang.
In another example, Omid Scobie, a royal journalist who has close ties to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, claimed that he overheard Morgan talking about extracting information from voicemails in 2002 when he was an intern at the Mirror graduated
Morgan responded to the allegations today by releasing a screenshot of an episode of South Park Season 26, in which characters including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle go on a “worldwide privacy tour”.
He later told ITV News that Prince Harry should apologize for the invasion of his family’s privacy.
“I will not be lecturing on the invasion of privacy by Prince Harry, someone who has spent the last three years recklessly and cynically invading the privacy of the royal family for big commercial reasons and telling a lot of lies about them.” , he said. “Therefore, I propose that he leaves court and apologizes to his family for the shameful invasion of privacy he has committed.”
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“I will not listen to lectures on Prince Harry’s invasion of privacy.”
Amid allegations of phone hacking while on the Mirror, Piers Morgan tells ITV News that Harry should apologize to the royal family for the “invasion of privacy he has committed” https://t.co/ P3RH5guPSb pic.twitter.com/4uGvezu5y6
— ITV News (@itvnews) May 10, 2023
According to The Guardian, Mirror Group Newspapers has previously admitted its journalists were involved in phone hacking and paid victims £100m ($126m) in settlements and legal costs.
The newspaper group denied that senior officials had any knowledge of the illegal activity. The company also denies hacking Prince Harry’s phone but apologized today to the Duke of Sussex for using a private investigator to illegally gather evidence on him at a nightclub in 2004.
In his testimony, Prince Harry told the Supreme Court that unlawful activities at Mirror Group Newspapers had contributed to “great distress” and “paranoia”. He will testify at the June trial according to BBC journalist Katie Razzall.