Over at Byline, veteran investigative reporter Paddy French has an exclusive which concludes the Mirror Group, and by implication Piers Morgan, knew about phone hacking well before it became standard practice by Glenn Mulcaire at News of the World. Below is just an excerpt from the full damning in depth piece.
But this is just a taster. Paddy is pitching on Byline a full unauthorised biography of Piers Morgan:
Morgan is one of the most important members of the cast of the phone hacking scandal. He was the first of a long line of Murdoch editors forged in the crucible of the Sun’s show business column “Bizarre”. One of his proteges was Andy Coulson.
Morgan was singled out by Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie as a future editor and it was his patronage that led to his appointment as News of the World editor at the age of 29. There Morgan singled out a young reporter and promoted her to Features Editor: her name was Rebekah Brooks. Morgan was destined to edit the Sun but when Daily Mirror boss David Montgomery — a former News of the World editor — offered him the editorship of the Mirror, Morgan accepted.
By 2003, the troika of Morgan (Mirror), Coulson (News of the World) and Brooks (The Sun) had an iron grip on Britain’s tabloids. Morgan was at the Mirror for nearly ten years — a decade that saw the paper embrace the “dark arts” of illegal news-gathering.
The plan is to produce a readable, balanced picture of a talented but flawed individual.
I’m a retired television producer so I don’t need to be paid for my time.
But researching, writing and publishing a book as ambitious as this one does not come cheap, especially since it needs to be read for libel.
I hope you will support the venture.
For a taster of the article, more below
The Criminal Media Nexus 