CNN anchor Piers Morgan ran stories as the former editor of both News of the World and Daily Mirror using information gathered by phone hacking, its being reported:
Piers Morgan, the CNN broadcaster, has said that newspaper articles based on the findings of people paid to tap phones and rake through bins were published during his time as a tabloid newspaper editor, it can be disclosed.
...[I]t has emerged that Mr Morgan gave a notably different response when asked during an interview with the BBC about his potential involvement in covert "gutter" journalistic practices during his time as a tabloid editor between 1994 and 2004.
“What about this nice middle-class boy, who would have to be dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff,” he was asked on BBC's Desert Island Discs in June 2009. “How did you feel about that?"
Mr Morgan replied: “To be honest, let’s put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work.
A former reporter at the Daily Mirror claims that hacking was “endemic”:
James Hipwell, 45, told The Independent that hacking at the Daily Mirror was widespread and "seen as a bit of a wheeze". He said he would give evidence to a public inquiry into hacking ordered by David Cameron and headed by Lord Justice Brian Leveson.
Until now the hacking scandal has been confined to the News of the World, recently closed by News International, but there have been widespread claims similar activities were carried out in other media organisations.
Hipwell worked at the Mirror under the editorship of Piers Morgan, now a presenter with CNN. He was made aware of the hacking because the paper's City desk, on which he worked, was next to the showbiz desk. "You know what people around you are doing", he said. "They would call a celebrity with one phone and when it was answered they would then hang up. By that stage the other phone would be into their [the celebrity's] voicemail and they would key in the code, 9999 or 0000. I saw that a lot."
He has previously stated that voicemail hacking was “rife at tabloids”:
This technique, long a dirty secret of tabloid newspaper journalism, has come to light this week after the News of the World royal editor, Clive Goodman, and another man were charged with intercepting phone messages.
"Many of the Daily Mirror's stories would come from hacking into a celebrity's voicemail," Hipwell said of his time at the Mirror between 1998 and his sacking in early 2000.
He added that targets for voicemail hacking during his period at the Mirror had included the Spice Girls.
On one occasion, a Mirror journalist deleted a voicemail message from one of the Spice Girls' phones to stop his rival on the Sun getting hold of it, according to Hipwell.
The award-winning 2003 Daily Mirror scoop “Sven and Ulrika”, published while Piers Morgan was editor, was also derived from voicemail hacking:
Morgan’s eventual summons was probably inevitable, but he has not helped his cause by allowing himself to be drawn into spats with Louise Mensch MP and Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes.
His name first surfaced in connection with this scandal during the House of Commons emergency debate on phone hacking on July 6th. Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders claimed that the Daily Mirror had used “voicemail interception to reveal Sven-Goran Eriksson’s affair with Ulrika Jonsson” and that it had done this “when under the auspices of Piers Morgan”.
This was followed up by a more detailed account of the same episode on Guido Fawkes’s website in which the blogger claimed that in 2002 James Scott, then a Daily Mirror showbiz reporter and now the deputy editor of the Sunday Mirror, listened to Ulrika Jonsson’s voicemails and discovered several messages left by a Swedish-speaking man. Scott played the messages back to a half-Swedish Daily Mirror secretary who translated them, revealing that the mystery caller was Sven-Goran Eriksson. From there, the Mirror was able to piece together the story that the the two were having an affair and duly broke it on April 19th, 2002.
Update: The publisher of the Daily Mirror is facing legal action over the allegations:
Mark Lewis, the lawyer who represents dozens of claimants suing the News of the World, confirmed last week that legal actions against Trinity Mirror were also being prepared. "There are about three or four cases which will start within the next few weeks," he said. Claims will be filed at the High Court.
One of the cases is believed to involve Paul Marsden, a former Liberal Democrat MP. He has said he believes his phone was hacked in 2003 when stories about him appeared in the Sunday Mirror.
Legal action could force Trinity Mirror to disclose documents relating to stories about prominent people who suspect their phones were hacked. Mr Marsden said earlier this year: "We have put together evidence which brings the only reasonable conclusion now that my phone was indeed hacked. That evidence comes from witnesses who can verify it and from the phone records."
...Any legal action is likely to increase pressure on Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror from 1995 to 2004 and is now an interviewer on CNN.