UK newspaper group Daily Mail & General Trust has not published any stories based on hacked messages, its chief executive said, as anxiety spreads that phone-hacking was not limited to News Corp’s News of the World.
“Our titles have not published stories based on hacked messages,” Martin Morgan told journalists on a conference call on Tuesday, adding that the company saw no need for an internal investigation into its newsgathering practices. Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror mass-market tabloid, said it had launched a review of its editorial controls and procedures in the wake of the scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World this month. A spokesman said one of the purposes of the internal review expected to be completed by mid-September was to make sure that the provenance of any story was understood by senior managers.
Piers Morgan, an ex-editor of the News of the World and the Mirror, has argued on CNN and Twitter with British lawmaker Louise Mensch about an allegation she made in parliament that he hacked celebrities’ mobile phones while editing the Mirror. Morgan, who now presents chat show Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, says he never hacked a phone, never told anyone to do so and never published a story based on hacking. DMGT is considering launching its own mass-market Sunday tabloid to fill the gap in the market left by the News of the World, and has seen an improvement in circulation of its mid-market newspaper the Mail on Sunday, CEO Martin Morgan said. “We’re considering whether there’s a gap in the market for a new Sunday title,” Morgan told journalists on a conference call after the group reported a 2 percent increase in underlying revenue for the quarter to end-June on Tuesday. Finance Director Stephen Daintith, a former CFO of News Corp’s British newspaper operations, said the Mail on Sunday had picked up about 500,000 in circulation since the News of the World’s closure, helped by a price cut. Its circulation rose to about 2.4 million from 1.9 million, compared with the 2.7 million the News of the World typically sold before it was shut down two weeks ago.
The News of the World has admitted hacking into the voicemails of celebrities to rake up stories, but a revelation earlier this month that they had hacked into the phone of a murdered schoolgirl provoked a national outrage.
