Piers Morgan told me how to hack a phone, says Jeremy Paxman

[editor]

Piers Morgan described to Jeremy Paxman how to hack into a mobile phone at a lunch held at the headquarters of the Daily Mirror publisher, the BBC presenter has told the Leveson inquiry.

Paxman said on Wednesday afternoon that at the same lunch he attended Morgan also teased TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson about the details of private conversations she had had with Sven-Göran Eriksson, at the time the England football manager....

Earlier that year, the Mirror had revealed that Jonsson had an affair with the then England football coach.

Choosing his words carefully, Paxman continued: "Now, I don't know whether he was repeating a conversation that he had heard or he was imagining this conversation. In fact, to be fair to him, I think we should accept both possibilities, because he probably was imagining it. It was a rather bad parody.

"I was quite struck by it because I'm rather wet behind the ears in many of these things. I didn't know that that sort of thing went on."

Paxman said that Morgan also turned to him at the lunch and explained how phone hacking worked.

"He then turned to me and said 'Have you got a mobile phone?', I said 'Yes', and he said 'Have you got a security setting on the message bit of it'," he added. "I don't think it was called voicemail in those days, I didn't know what he was talking about. He then explained that the way to get access to people's message was to go to the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234 and that if you didn't put on your own code … his words: 'your're a fool'."

He added: "I don't know whether he was making this up, making up the conversation, but it was clearly something that he was familiar with and I wasn't ... I didn't know that this went on."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/23/leveson-piers-morgan-paxman

Morgan has had a little hissy fit on Twitter in response:



https://twitter.com/#!/piersmorgan

 

[Kippa]

Time for Lousie Mench to get her revenge on him perhaps?

 

[London_Calling]

Is there anyone who didn't know that circa 2000? Common knowledge pretty well any time after the Royal phone hacking.

 

[southside]

He's only done this because Morgan refused him a spot on that shite drivel infested celeb crap show he hosts.

 

[elbows]

Its not exactly a revelation but much of the power of the present shitstorm about politicians and the media is that it will feature pantomimes with some star power, at least for those in the audience of the 'politics is show business for ugly people' phenomenon.

 

[bemused]

I really hope Morgan gets caught out. Toad.

 

[DexterTCN]

I

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/23/leveson-piers-morgan-paxman

Morgan has had a little hissy fit on Twitter in response:

View attachment 19517

https://twitter.com/#!/piersmorgan

I didn't see that part of Paxman's testimony but reading it certainly gives the impression that Morgan was telling Paxman how to protect himself from it.

 

[Roadkill]

I had a mate working on the Mirror in Piers Morgan's time and after. I heard a few tales from him about how the tabloids operate, although he never mentioned phone hacking. I'd be most curious to hear what he has to say about the whole business, but unfortunately we've lost touch.

 

[William of Walworth]

I
I didn't see that part of Paxman's testimony but reading it certainly gives the impression that Morgan was telling Paxman how to protect himself from it.

Little as I like Morgan in any way, that was my reading of it as well.

 

[agricola]

repost, but:

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I'd never heard that before. Ta!

 

[GarveyLives]

23 May 2012​

The fantasy ...

15 December 2023​

The reality ...

"He (then Daily Mirror journalist James Hipwell) also said that it was inconceivable that Mr Morgan, the editor, did not know that he was publishing stories that had come about as a result of phone hacking."

The Duke of Sussex and others -v- MGN Limited [2023] EWHC 3217 (Ch), para 85, ps21-22


“Mr Morgan responded to my question by initially asking me which network provider I used for my mobile phone. I told him which network I was on and Mr Morgan told me the default PIN for that network. He then explained that the default PIN numbers were well known and rarely changed, which is how mobile phone messages could be accessed remotely using the default PIN number. He said to me, “That was how we got the story on Sven and Ulrika”, with a smile, or words to that effect.

The Duke of Sussex and others -v- MGN Limited [2023] EWHC 3217 (Ch), para 93, p23

"In the case of Mr Morgan, the evidence relied on is limited, as I have explained. It appears from what MGN volunteered about not calling Mr Morgan that he was not invited to give evidence on MGN’s behalf to avoid a “side show” distracting from the key issues at trial, though MGN’s pleaded case does state that MGN had obtained evidence from Mr Morgan about the allegations. Mr Morgan has stated publicly on several occasions that although he knew about phone hacking, he has never hacked a phone or instructed anyone to hack a phone or made use of phone hacking. It is therefore possible that he might have said that he told board members about it: he did talk about it in front of the then chairman at lunch"

"In the event, in view of the oral evidence that was given, the documentary evidence and the conclusions that I have reached about the 14 Incidents, it is unnecessary to rely on any adverse inference from the absence of Mr Morgan from the witness box in reaching conclusions about board and legal department
knowledge of VMI ..."

The Duke of Sussex and others -v- MGN Limited [2023] EWHC 3217 (Ch), paras 319-329, p75


"Mr Omid Scobie, a journalist with a particular interest in writing about the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, gave evidence that, when a student of journalism, he spent a week on the showbiz desk of The People and a week with the Mirror’s “3am” team. At The People, he said that he was given a list of mobile telephone numbers and a detailed verbal description of how to listen to voicemails, as if it were a standard newsgathering technique. He said that on one day at the Mirror, Mr Morgan came over to discuss an article being written about Kylie Minogue and James Gooding and asked how confident the team were in the story. He was told that the information had come from voicemails. There is an article about Minogue and Gooding dated 11 May 2002 bylined to James Scott, who was one of the showbiz journalists and a known phone hacker. There is an invoice from TDI to Mr Scott dated 7 May 2002 for “extensive inquiries carried out on your behalf” (for £170) and the mobile telephone numbers of both subjects were in Mr Scott’s Palm Pilot. These documents bear out Mr Scobie’s recollection."

"Mr Scobie was pressed hard about the likely veracity of these accounts, about some evidence that he gave in the Duchess of Sussex’s litigation, and about his motive in giving evidence on behalf of the claimants. He said that he remembered the incidents very well because it was at such a formative stage of his education in journalism and he was shocked by what he learnt. I found Mr Scobie to be a straightforward and reliable witness and I accept what he said about Mr Morgan’s involvement in the Minogue/Gooding story. No evidence was called by MGN to contradict it"

The Duke of Sussex and others -v- MGN Limited [2023] EWHC 3217 (Ch), paras 330-331, ps77-78


"Dr Evan Harris, former Director of Hacked Off and now a legal analyst to the successful claimants against Mirror Group Newspapers over phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering, deconstructs former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan’s statement on the damning judgement against the firm ..."

Piers Morgan’s Statement on the Prince Harry Phone Hacking Case – Annotated