Black Mirror Media
Piers Morgan’s exposure is a triumph. But the ‘revelations’ are not about individuals or celebrity-wars but about a broken media.
Hearing the words Piers Morgan may cause instant drowsiness. He’s a media-bore, an ever-present sub-Partridge phenomenon that haunts your timeline like a daytime tv media ghoul. He is famous for creating his own niche-media brand – an oeuvre of Gammon TV that is as lucrative as it is both shocking and hyper-banal. But his exposure at yesterdays trial at the High Court in London over “alleged unlawful information gathering by journalists” employed by the publisher of the Daily Mirror is a wake-up call. It smashed the barely-believable charade that the tabloid press has clung to for years – that the News of the World was the one ‘rotten apple in the barrel’ – and that no real regulation of the press is required.
Yesterday the publisher of the Daily Mirror newspaper apologised “unreservedly” to Prince Harry for unlawfully gathering information about him, the High Court was told. Several high-profile figures are bringing damages claims against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over alleged unlawful information gathering at its titles (this is legalese for industrial-scale phone hacking).
It’s a deeply personal case as Morgan’s war against Harry pre-dates his cringeworthy obsession with his wife. In a separate case against the publishers of the now defunct News of the World, Harry claimed in court documents submitted to the High Court that Mr Morgan “knew about, encouraged and concealed” illegal targeting of his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, when he was editor of the paper.
News Group Newspapers denies the allegations.
Morgan’s weird obsession with Meghan Markle has been documented over years:
“You are my kind of girl.” A brief history of Piers Morgan’s weird and creepy obsession with Meghan Markle. Watch his “love” for her go to hate when he gets stood up. Meghan Markle dodged a bullet. pic.twitter.com/16HvthPPLP
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) May 10, 2023
Hacks and Hacking
Setting aside the personal feuds, the chatterati and the ridiculous Mr Morgan, the real story here is about the scale of media failure, the political motivation of celebrity culture and the ability of the tabloid press to create narratives for the rich and powerful which act as a bromide against revolt.
Harry is one of one four individuals whose claims against Mirror Group Newspapers – which publishes the Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People – are being tested at this trial. In addition to phone hacking, many of the claims relate to the millions of pounds spent by the Mirror newspapers on PIs who (allegedly) carried out illegal acts on behalf of the group. MGN has accepted that phone hacking took place at its titles and has already paid out more than £100m in settlements and legal costs. It is only fighting this trial on the basis that many of the claims were brought too late.
Morgan’s downfall is glorious and well overdue.
His media backstory is a tale of always falling upwards, protected only by the ridiculous world he inhabits. As Mic Wright (aka Broken Bottle Boy) writes (‘David Simon vs. Piers Morgan: A study in comparing real success and vanity metrics’):
“At The Mirror, Morgan had to apologise for the headline Achtung Surrender! For You, Fritz Ze Euro Championship Is Over on 25 June 1996, the day before England met Germany in the semi-final of Euro 96 (Germany won on penalties), and, in 2000, was ‘lucky’ to survive the ‘City Slickers scandal’ in which he breached the Press Complaints Commission’s code of conduct on financial journalism by buying shares tipped by his paper’s columnists.”
“Morgan’s luck as Mirror editor ran out on May 14 2004 when he was sacked with immediate effect. He got the boot after refusing to apologise to Sly Bailey, boss of The Mirror’s then-owners Trinity Mirror, for publishing photos that claimed to show soldiers from the Queens Lancashire Regiment abusing prisoners in Iraq. They were shown to be fakes.
“While The Mirror responded with the headline Sorry… we were hoaxed, Morgan refused to admit the photographs were faked. He rightly stated that abuse similar to that shown in the photographs was being perpetrated by British Army troops in Iraq at the time, while seemingly failing to understand that printing faked images was indefensible.”
Myths of the ‘Uncensored’
And yet every failure has been met with another promotion, another gig, a new show. Editors and scribes like Morgan are useful. Like colleagues operating at this level there is a revolving door between the offices of newspaper and politics. The political-media elite are conjoined twins.
The US writer Steve Schmidt called him “a preposterous figure, a perfect avatar for early 21st century media corruption and its accompanying fetish for vapid, meaningless and empty celebrity.” But this emptiness is not without cost nor is it politically neutral. It appears vapid but has much impact. Morgan’s schtick is too feed-off and fuel the culture wars he barely comprehends, and no doubt his High Court case will lead to further lucrative work.
The press in this country are engaged in industrial-scale hacking, snooping and smearing. They have created a vast network of informants, paparazzi and hacks who collectively drown the public sphere in sleb trivia backed with huge resources of wealthy backers. This story is not about a single tv thug like Morgan it is about societal breakdown induced and curated by the tabloid press and now projected by their associated batch of failing tv shows.
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For Morgan and for the staffs of the mainstream media ‘truth’ has always been. Trumpian construct – the truth comprises whatever things are deemed factual for the justification of whatever crooked premise the publisher or writer is putting forward at that specific moment and for a specific mendacious purpose. When the purpose changes then the facts are changed to fit.
The concept of trust is something to be sneered at. Gaining trust for just as long as it takes to get enough people to act in the way the conman wants to make a win, is the game. And there is no sense of guilt on the part of the conman. The media present the victims as fools for being duped – it is their fault.
It is their fault. “But nobody told me” is not an acceptable excuse for a grown up. Especially one claiming to be duped or shocked by people they well know to be liars lying to them. There is no flavour of cynicism or scepticism too strong to deal with either corporate or activist media.
I seem to recall that Levenson Part 2 was going to look further at press behaviour post phone hacking scandal.
What happened to that? I remember David Cameron got leaned on by Press Barons and it was abandoned ‘to preserve freedom of the press’.
We need a free press not a shit press that does the bidding of rich proprietors the majority of whom are so loyal to their readers that they don’t pay their taxes in UK.
One of best pieces of advice I received many years ago was don’t read any paper with Daily in title if want to know about current affairs.
…the real story here is about the scale of media failure, the political motivation of celebrity culture and the ability of the tabloid press to create narratives for the rich and powerful which act as a bromide against revolt.
That’s a reasonable summary of the problems of ‘Fleet Street.’ Highlighted, again, for me in the last 48 hours by the failure of The Guardian to cover the successful legal action by the GS of the FBU against the GS of UCU.
Not a single word. Because so few firefighters buy The Guardian?
Fortunately, north of the border, ….. ?