Piers Morgan, #Leveson Trend Worldwide During Phone Hacking Trial

CNN host and former News Corp. tabloid editor, Piers Morgan, joined the Leveson Inquiry via videolink from Los Angeles to testify Tuesday morning about phone hacking. He denied ever having any knowledge of phone hacking, being involved, or instructing his staff to do so during his tenure as editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 to 2004. He did admit to hearing a phone message between Heather Mills and Beatles star Paul McCartney. Morgan has said that he first heard of phone hacking in 2001, but today he said he didn’t remember who told him about it.

Towards the end of the trial, he compared the havoc the scandal has wreaked onto the publisher and its employees to rock stars:

“It’s gone how I thought it would. It becomes almost like a rockstar who has an album brought out from his back catalogue with his worst ever hits… I still feel very proud of a lot of the good stuff the News of the World ever did… I think there has to be a better balance here because a lot of the very good things the newspapers were doing in these periods are not being highlighted at all.”

Since news of the hacking broke in July, Morgan has been quick to deny any sort of allegations and has taken to Twitter to defend his own reputation:

You can track the conversation around the trial using the hashtag #Leveson.

Interested to follow more people around this story? Sulia.com has a great list of people to follow around the News of the World/News Corp. Scandal.