CNN star Piers Morgan faces UK media inquiry

[December 20, 2011]  LONDON (AP) -- CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan faces questions Tuesday about his time at the top of Britain's tabloid industry -- widely anticipated testimony that may dredge up allegations his British newspaper career was colored by wrongdoing.

Morgan ran two British tabloids -- the News of the World and the Daily Mirror -- before his editorship was cut short by scandal in 2004. He's one of a host of tabloid newspaper executives being called before a British inquiry into media ethics set up in the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, which has rocked the country's press and political elite.

More than a dozen journalists have been arrested, senior executives with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media empire have lost their jobs, and top U.K. police officers have resigned over their failure to tackle the scandal. Witnesses at the inquiry have exposed the seamy side of British journalism, with reporters accused of cooking up stories, blackmailing subjects, hacking phones and paying bribes to police officers to secure tips.

Morgan may have more juicy details to add. His memoirs contain tantalizing references to questionably obtained material, and the 46-year-old has acknowledged condoning unethical behavior -- including overseeing payoffs to spies on rival newspapers.

Morgan denies having ever hacked a phone or knowingly run a story based on hacked information. But he's expected to be quizzed on statements that appear to refer to the practice -- in particular a 2006 article in which he says he was played a phone message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney on the answering machine of his now ex-wife Heather Mills.

Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have gotten hold of the message honestly.

The inquiry, led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, heard earlier Tuesday about the culture in tabloid newsrooms -- one described by some witnesses as being scarred by bullying.

Steve Turner, the general secretary of the British Association of Journalists, said he had dealt with more than a dozen cases of bullying in the newsroom in recent years. He blamed diminishing circulation and "the demand to produce better stories and more of them from a diminishing workforce" for some of the pressure, but said the culture at Murdoch's News of the World was particularly challenging.

That, he said, may have "pressured people more than most into behaving appallingly."

Separately, the lawyer for former England soccer player Paul Gascoigne suggested that the sportsman's legal action against the News of the World was close to being settled.

Gascoigne is one of several dozen people suing the paper over claims that their phones were hacked. Lawyer Jeremy Reed said the case was "settling" but didn't give any further details.

Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World in July after the full hacking scandal broke.

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Online:

Leveson Inquiry:
http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

[Associated Press; By RAPHAEL G. SATTER]

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