Piers Morgan, host of CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” and a former editor of two British tabloid newspapers, rejected as “nonsense” a British lawmaker’s allegations Tuesday that he participated in phone hacking. Morgan said he may have been a victim of hacking, but was never a perpetrator. Louise Mensch, a conservative member of Parliament on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, made the allegations during a hearing before the committee Tuesday.
“Piers Morgan, who is now a celebrity anchor at CNN, you do not appear to have asked him any questions at all about phone hacking,” Mensch told her fellow lawmakers. “As a former editor for the Daily Mirror, he said in his book ‘The Insider’ recently, and I quote, ‘that little trick of entering a standard four-digit code allows anyone to call that number and hear all your messages.’
“In that book he boasted that using that little trick enables him to win scoop of the year for a story about former England national soccer team manager Sven-Goran Eriksson,” Mensch said. Mensch’s comments elicited an immediate riposte from Morgan. “That MP just claimed I boasted in my book of using phone-hacking for a scoop,” he said on Twitter.
“Complete nonsense. Just read the book.” Morgan accused Mensch of abusing parliamentary privilege and demanded an apology, but Mensch held her ground. Morgan worked for News Corp. as editor of the News of the World from 1994 to 1995 and served as editor for the Daily Mirror, a paper not owned by Rupert Murdoch, from 1995 to 2004. The 46-year-old British talk-show host replaced Larry King on CNN early this year.