As a newspaper editor who has commanded troops on both sides of New York’s pungent tabloid wars, Colin Myler has always shown a thirst for the eye-popping story and a willingness to take the heat to run something that will sell, sell, sell.
In the four months since he became editor of New York’s Daily News, Myler, 59, has made it clear that he identifies with the sensibilities of the common person.
When a jury was unable to reach a full verdict in the trial of a police officer charged with raping a schoolteacher, the News’ front-page headline screamed: “What does a woman have to do to prove she was raped?”
The headline for another cover story, on teachers accused of unseemly conduct with students, read: “FIRE ’EM! Exposed: Perv teachers still on payroll.”
However, every now and then in his rollicking journalistic adventures, Myler has become the story, or at least an integral part of it — and that became the case again on Tuesday when he found himself a prime target of a British parliamentary panel’s report on the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers.
The panel concluded that Myler had misled them about his knowledge of the illegal behavior, which puts him at risk of being cited for contempt of the British parliament.
Myler took over as editor of News of the World in 2007, when the phone-hacking scandal was just beginning to rattle the paper, and he was still editor when Murdoch closed the London tabloid last summer.
Myler declined to comment beyond a prepared statement saying he stood by his testimony and expected to be exonerated.
Mortimer Zuckerman, the owner of the Daily News, said in an interview on Tuesday that he had “total confidence” in Myler and indicated that subsequent information would clear him.
“It’s not the only report that will be out,” Zuckerman said, refusing to be more specific.
How to cover the report was a ticklish question for Myler. The panel also concluded that Murdoch was “not fit” to run his company, something that would ordinarily be delicious fodder for the Daily News. However, with Myler caught up in the story, nothing was published on the News’ Web site on Tuesday.
Myler’s career has taken him back and forth across the Atlantic. He was born in Liverpool in the UK and, without a college degree, entered journalism at the Catholic Pictorial news agency. Soon he became a Fleet Street reporter at the Sun and then at the Daily Mail. By 1992, he was editor of the Sunday Mirror and later the Daily Mirror.
Those who have worked with Myler described him as an ultra-competitive newsman.
In 1993, he caused national agitation when he published pictures in the Sunday Mirror of Princess Diana working out at a gym. The photographs had been bought from a London gym owner who took them with hidden cameras.
Myler left journalism briefly to become head of a marketing organization for a rugby league. He then reprised his role as editor of the Sunday Mirror, until a dicey story ended his run.
In April 2001, he published an article that raised racism as a potential motive of two soccer players then being tried on charges of attacking a Pakistani fan. The judge ruled that the article had poisoned the trial and ordered a retrial. Myler resigned three days later and the paper was fined for contempt of court.
Some thought Myler’s journalism career was over, but Murdoch had other ideas. In short order, he hired Myler as one of the top editors at the New York Post. He was not in charge, but he was back chasing news.
In his brief time at the helm of the Daily News, Myler has made a mark. The paper seems to have been redirected toward hard news, under headlines consistent with the crusading and provocative school of British tabloid journalism.
Last week, a cover story on the US Secret Service prostitution scandal ran beneath the headline: “Memo to the Colombian ambassador who doesn’t accept America’s apology for agents’ hooker scandal ... SCREW YOU!”
The accompanying picture was of the woman suspected of being at the center of the scandal, wearing a skimpy bikini.
Myler favors big graphics and big pictures, with multiple design elements defining the page. Lots of type fills the tops of pictures.
“Sometimes it feels like design on steroids,” said a Daily News staffer who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not