Allegations of phone-hacking spread beyond the felled News of the World to other tabloids on Saturday as media heir James Murdoch faced pressure over the extent of his knowledge of the scandal.
Former journalists at the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror — the main tabloid competitors to Rupert Murdoch’s British stable — reportedly said the illegally hacking of voicemails was widespread at their papers too.
The scandal has also rocked the British police and even given Prime Minister David Cameron a rough ride, but has so far largely been limited to the News of the World, which Murdoch shut on July 7 amid public outrage. James Hipwell, a former Daily Mirror financial journalist jailed in 2005 for buying shares before tipping them in the paper, said he heard hacking was being used because he worked next to the showbusiness desk where it was rife. “You know what people around you are doing,” the 45-year-old told The Independent newspaper.
“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.”
“There was a great hilarity about it.”
Hipwell worked at the Mirror for two years until 2000 when it under the editorship of Piers Morgan, now a CNN presenter. Hipwell was sacked by the Mirror over the so-called “City Slickers” scandal. Morgan, who himself is also a former News of the World editor, has denied any knowledge that phone-hacking went on at the paper. Separately the BBC quoted an unidentified former Sunday Mirror journalist who worked on the paper in the past decade who claimed to have witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom.
Trinity Mirror, the group which publishes both papers, said its journalists work within the law and the code of conduct of Britain’s self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission.
