CNN's Piers Morgan 'told interviewer stories were used based on phone tapping'

CNN ^ | July 27 2011 | By Jon Swaine, New York

[NoLibZone]

Mr Morgan, a former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor who is now a high-profile television presenter in the US, has spent the past week categorically denying ever printing material derived from phone hacking.

He spoke out after being accused by a Conservative MP and political bloggers of being involved in the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, for which he used to work.

“For the record, in my time at the News of the World and the Mirror, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone,” he said last week on CNN, where he now hosts a talk-show.

But it 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?"

[Darksheare]

He protests too much.

[MacMattico]

But it's all Murdoch's fault so we must get rid of Fox news!! (inevitable MSM/Obama conclusion)

Is it really a shock that some people working for a tabloid magazine tried to hack peoples phones? Really?

[Deagle]

Mr. Morgan... Were any of your interviews based on information that was obtained from phone hacking?

[MacMattico]

I've also noticed that CNN keeps acting like Murdoch is responsible, a man at the top of a media empire of over 53,000 employees.

Yet Piers Morgan, who edited said tabloid accused of hacking, now employed by CNN, was said to have no idea.