Pressed on the fact that at least five people have previously been awarded damages by MGN for phone hacking while Pier Morgan was editor, including actors Sadie Frost and Shane Richie, Mr Morgan noted that he only worked for the Daily Mirror and “never had any responsibility” for the Sunday Mirror or Sunday People.
The Duke
of Sussex and other celebrities including Coronation Street actors Nikki
Sanderson and Michael Le Vell have accused Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) of
unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking and the use of private
investigators.
Accounting
to report, Piers Morgan has denied knowing “anything about” phone hacking at
the Mirror and said he “couldn’t give a monkey’s cuss” about the High Court
case brought by Prince Harry.
On the
second day of the seven-week trial, which began on Wednesday, the duke’s lawyer
David Sherborne told the court that Mr Morgan “lies right at the heart” of the
allegations, and insisted it was “inconceivable” that he and several other MGN
editors had been unaware of the alleged wrongdoing.
MGN
apologised to the duke at the trial’s outset for one instance involving a
private investigator, but the publisher is contesting the other claims, for
which its lawyer Andrew Green KC on Thursday insisted there was “barely any
evidence”.
While Mr
Morgan – who edited the Daily Mirror from 1994 until 2005 – is not required to
give evidence at the trial, he discussed the matter in a wide-ranging interview
in March with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, broadcast as the High Court proceedings
began.
He added:
“There’s no evidence I knew anything about any of it. I never told anybody to
hack a phone. And [none]... of the hundreds and hundreds – thousands, possibly
– of journalists who worked with me on the Daily Mirror have ever even been
arrested in connection with phone hacking.
“So there
are lots of civil things going on, but the bar for that is a lot lower than it
is for any criminal action. I’ve not been involved in any of these settlements
at all. Nobody has even asked me for my opinion, which I think says it all.”
“I’ve not
been called to give evidence, I know nothing about it,” he told BBC News, describing
phone hacking as “completely wrong” and “lazy journalists being lazy”.
Questioned
about being viewed as a “hands-on editor” – a description levied against him in
court on Thursday in connection with a story about Prince Michael of Kent
alleged to have been “obtained illegally” – Mr Morgan said: “I didn’t [know
about hacking]. So I don’t care whether it stretches people’s credulity or
not.”
He added:
“Can you be absolutely certain what everyone is doing all the time? Of course
you can’t, we had hundreds and hundreds of people in the newsroom. I can be
certain about what I knew and what I did, and no one has ever produced anything
to contradict what I’m saying.”
Asked
whether it isn’t the most basic job of an editor to be sure nothing illegal is
taking place, Mr Morgan replied: “How can you be?”
Claiming
he was “not at all” worried about Harry’s legal action, he insisted he
“couldn’t give a monkey’s cuss”, accusing the duke of flying from the US to
“lecture the media once again about invasion of privacy and intrusion, and yet
he is the biggest invader of privacy in royal history.”
“So I’m
not going to take any lectures from him and I don’t give a damn what actions he
wants to take. Good luck to you. It’s like being lectured on the truth by
Donald Trump,” he added.
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