From BBC Radio 4 Media Show podcast 27 April 2011:
Guardian editor morally worse than Andy Coulson, phone hacking not “the greatest crime in the world”- and did Piers himself know anything about it when editing the Mirror? Absolutely not. Transcript below:
Piers Morgan: The interesting thing about phone hacking for me is the very curious moral and ethical position of The Guardian, who have appointed themselves at the great bishops of everything moral in the print trade. and yet they quite happily published Wikileaks day in, day out, and they based it in absolute knowledge – unlike Andy Coulson who has denied any knowledge of what was going on in terms of the material coming into the paper from illegal, or alleged illegal, methodology.
In the Wikileaks case, the Guardian knew, absolutely where the Wikileaks were coming from. I would like to know the moral and ethical distinction between an editor who denies knowing that material was gained illegally and it got published in his paper, and an editor who openly says “I know that these documents were gained illegally”. And then the question comes down to this: public interest – it’s the old debate – public interest. If Alan Rusbridger can say unequivocally that Gaddafi had four mistresses is in the public interest (because the Guardian published that information in Wikileaks), that is a good oldfashioned sex romp allegation…
Steve Hewlett: In the Press Gazette some time ago you said, “as for Clive Goodman” (the royal editor who was imprisoned) “I feel a lot of sympathy for someone who has been the convenient fall guy for an investigative practice that everyone knows was going on at alomst every newspaper in Fleet Street for four years…” When you were editor of the Mirror, did you know what was going on?
Piers Morgan: No, absolutely not and what I meant was – and I’ve been out of the game for seven years – I just heard a lot of rumours that this was more widespread than people were letting on. I have no idea how widespread, I’ve no idea of any particular incidents or stories, but we can already see from the other stuff that’s come out that clearly it was more widespread than people thought.
Do I think this is the greatest crime in the world? I mean what would have happened for example if the News Of The World had been hacking Osama Bin Laden’s phone… would that have been permissible, even though it technically breached the latest data protection laws ? It’s an interesting question to throw out there.
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