A prominent British TV presenter says CNN talk show host Piers Morgan gave him a primer on phone hacking, a revelation that suggests he knew a fair amount about how the shady practice was carried out.
BBC television news presenter Jeremy Paxman told a media ethics inquiry on Wednesday that Morgan delivered his warning over lunch at the headquarters of the Mirror newspaper, which he was then editing, in 2002.
Paxman said that Morgan “turned to me and said: ‘Have you got a mobile phone?’”
“I said: ‘Yes,’ and he asked if there was a security setting on the message bit of it … I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Paxman said. “He then explained the way to get access to people’s messages 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, [in] his words: ‘You’re a fool.’”
Paxman testified before Lord Justice Brian Leveson, who is sifting through the fallout of the scandal over unethical and illegal behavior at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World newspaper, which Morgan briefly edited before moving to the Mirror.
Journalists at the now-defunct tabloid routinely hacked phones to get stories, bypassing weak security to illegally eavesdrop on private conversations of politicians, celebrities, sports stars and other public figures.
Morgan testified before Leveson late last year, suggesting he had only been aware of phone hacking in general terms.
Quizzed repeatedly about statements he had made suggesting that many in the British newspaper business were involved in phone hacking, Morgan claimed that he had merely been repeating gossip he picked off the industry’s rumor mill.
“I wasn’t aware that it was widely prevalent in any specific form,” he said in December last year, going on to explain that he was unaware of the details of what British journalists nicknamed “the dark arts.”
The CNN star has repeatedly denied having ever hacked a phone or knowingly run material obtained by phone hacking.
Morgan did not immediately answer questions about Paxman’s testimony sent via e-mail, but he took to Twitter to make light of the development.
“Right _ that’s the last time I’m inviting Jeremy Paxman to lunch,” Morgan wrote. “Ungrateful little wretch.”
Links between media and senior politicians were expected to come under scrutiny yesterday, when the disgraced former aide to Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt, Adam Smith, was due to testify before Leveson. Smith resigned after e-mail and text messages published by the inquiry showed him exchanging too-friendly e-mails with Murdoch lobbyist Frederic Michel, who was pressing Hunt’s department to help ease the media mogul’s multibillion dollar bid for UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB. Michel was also due to testify yesterday.
Hunt’s most senior civil servant, Jonathan Stephens, is due to testify today. Hunt is due to testify separately at a later date.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered