Piers Morgan

Morgan in 2011

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Piers Morgan (aka Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan, Piers Moron, born Piers Stefan O'Meara) (1965–) is a British TV presenter and former newspaper editor. He was a host on the high-profile ITV current affairs program Good Morning Britain from October 2015 until March 2021. During this period, he made a number of controversial remarks about race, women, LGBT issues, veganism, and other topics both on the show and on social media.

Previously he edited the Daily Mirror at the time when press phone hacking was a common practice; there are persistent claims he was involved in that illegal practice, as well as in insider share dealing where he bought shares being boosted by his paper's financial correspondents. The High Court of Justice has ruled that Morgan knew about this phone hacking, and that he committed perjury at the Leveson Inquiry to conceal that fact.

On television

He took a strong dislike to Meghan Markle, wife of Prince Harry, repeatedly attacking her on Good Morning Britain, including saying she was a liar when she said she had contemplated suicide. He angrily denied that hostility to her had anything to do with her race, claiming to know more about racism than several BAME people. It is more likely that Morgan holds a grudge against Markle due to his claims of being stood up by her prior to her engagement to Prince Harry.

Proving that Morgan can't take what he dishes out, on March 9^th 2021, Morgan stormed off the Good Morning Britain set (and later quit his presenter role entirely) after hearing some light criticism of his boorish behavior towards Markle from GMB weatherman Alex Beresford. In 2022 he moved to Rupert Murdoch's British news channel TalkTV, which was largely a televised version of British talk radio channel TalkRadio, but with Piers and Sharon Osborne doing evening shows.

He also took a bizarre dislike to vegan sausage rolls, which he later admitted was trolling because he was bored. It certainly fits in with his disdain for anything characteristic of Britain's youth (or under-50s).

Right to protest

Despite claiming to support free speech, Morgan absolutely despises peaceful protests. He has referred to pro-choice protests outside the houses of Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts as "domestic terrorism" despite them being completely law-abiding, outright comparing the protests to terror attacks in Wisconsin. He has also suggested that climate change protestors should be run over with cars (hopefully as a joke, though that wouldn't make it much better), and referred to the Women's March on Washington as "anti-democratic".

Friendship with Donald Trump

Morgan once considered Donald Trump a close personal friend, going back to an appearance on the celebrity version of Trump's TV show The Apprentice.

During the 2016 election, he commended Trump on 'tapping into the popular mood about a number of hot button issues.', but would never vote for Trump himself. In 2017, Morgan defended his friendship with Trump, saying it would be 'weird' to only be friends with people he agreed with. Saying '“I don’t agree with him about guns, I don’t agree with him about climate change, I don’t agree with him about abortion.' and that it doesn't mean he cannot be friendly with him. He strongly disagreed with Trump's Muslim travel ban describing it as 'understandable' but 'unacceptable' how he had gone about it. He also criticised the Women's March on Washington held on 21 January 2017 as being about Trump hating and resentment that Hilary Clinton had lost the election. In 2018 he interviewed Trump for British TV and was accused of sycophancy.

Morgan was critical of Trump for retweeting British far right racists, and was highly critical of Trump's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, at one point going as far to say Trump was 'batshit crazy'. In response Trump unfollowed Morgan's twitter. By the time of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Morgan finally washed his hands of Trump, publicly ending their friendship and branding Trump 'dangerous, deluded and despicable'. In 2022, Morgan interviewed Trump for his new show on TalkTV, and publicised it by pretending Trump had walked out of the interview.

Transphobia

See the main article on this topic: Transphobia

He has been critical of transgender rights, going back to an on-screen argument with Janet Mock on his TV show Piers Morgan Live. He also got upset over trans people in the youth group the Girl Guides, comparing trans people to rapists (the Guides welcomes trans girls). And he ridiculed trans people by making jokes about identifying as a penguin.

At Daily Mirror

He had a controversial time as editor of British left-leaning national tabloid the Daily Mirror from 1995-2004.

In 2000 he invested all his savings to buy £67,000 worth of shares in computer company Viglen, just before his paper's "City Slickers" column promoted it as a stock to buy. As a result, the stock price rose and he made a big profit. He was found to have broken a code of conduct on financial journalism but cleared of criminal charges (possibly in part because he lied to regulators by claiming to have bought many fewer shares than he did), while the journalists Anil Bhoyrul and James Hipwell were convicted of conspiracy to breach the Financial Services Act.

He has been accused of authorising or turning a blind eye to illegal phone hacking while at the Mirror. At the Leveson Inquiry, his claims that phone hacking did not happen under his watch were branded 'utterly unpersuasive' by Lord Justice Leveson. He was questioned by police in 2013 and 2015 but never charged. Although he denies being involved in hacking, in his 2005 book The Insider he explained how newspapers were able to access celebrity voicemails, indicating he certainly knew about it well before the full extent of tabloid phone hacking became apparent around 2010-11. In 2018 the actor Hugh Grant won a lawsuit against the Mirror for hacking his phone while Morgan was in charge. Morgan's only defence is total ignorance of what his staff was doing.

Similar to his later obsession with Meghan Markle, while editor of the Mirror he pursued a campaign of harassment against Princess Diana's lover James Hewitt. The paper admitted accessing Hewitt's private messages but in its defence said they were uninteresting. Hewitt claimed the paper's reporters followed him, intercepted his communications, and broke into his house to steal letters from the Princess of Wales, and says that Morgan "developed a particular obsession and vindictiveness towards him" because of his relationship with Diana. At one point, Hewitt's car was broken into and an autobiographical manuscript stolen; Piers Morgan was interviewed by police but the manuscript was never recovered and charges were not brought.

Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye magazine accused Morgan of trying to get dirt on him, having Hislop followed by private detectives and offering money to readers in exchange for salacious stories. There is a long-term feud between the Eye and Morgan, with Hislop's paper habitually using the nickname Piers Moron.

In 1996 he was criticised over the football-related headline "Achtung Surrender! For You Fritz Ze Euro Championship Is Over".

He eventually lost his job in 2004 after publishing fake photos of British soldiers allegedly abusing Iraqi prisoners, in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib and similar scandals.

Other feuds

He is reputed to have had feuds with:

• Jeremy Clarkson, motoring journalist and right-wing columnist, with Clarkson emptying a glass of water over Morgan and the two getting in a fistfight, after Morgan published a photo of Clarkson with a woman who wasn't his wife.
• Ewan McGregor, accusing the actor of being a "paedophile-loving hypocrite" for supporting Roman Polanski, after McGregor criticised Morgan's misogyny.
• Hugh Grant, the actor annoyed Morgan by calling for greater curbs on the press to prevent invasion of privacy.

Curriculum vitae

• 1988 — started work at The Sun, specifically on the 'Bizarre' column - essentially a gossip column. It is here he began using the less posh name Morgan rather than his legal name Pughe-Morgan.
• 1994 — becomes editor of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World.
• 1995 — leaves News of the World after publishing photos of Princess Diana's sister-in-law Catherine Victoria Lockwood leaving a clinic for addictive disorders, viewed an unacceptable invasion of privacy. He claims his departure was voluntary, others suggest Murdoch felt he had gone too far.
• 1995 — becomes editor of the Daily Mirror.
• 2004 — sacked from Mirror.
• 2005 — becomes co-owner of UK newspaper trade publication the Press Gazette.
• 2006 — starts work as a judge on America's Got Talent, the first of several such talent show roles on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably Britain's Got Talent.
• 2010 — replaces Larry King as a host on CNN; his show was axed in 2014 due to low ratings.
• 2015 — after a stint as guest-host of Good Morning Britain, is taken on permanently kicked off/resigned in 2021 after making inflammatory comments about Markle and receiving 41,000 complaints about the program
• 2022 — began hosting Piers Morgan Uncensored on talkTV.

Politics

Politically, Morgan identified as a supporter of the Conservative Party in a 1994 interview, saying he was "still basically a Tory", but expressed admiration for the new Labour Party leader Tony Blair, saying "he's not radical, speaks well and makes sense". He voted for the Kensington Conservative candidate in the 2019 UK general election, after previously voting for the Animal Welfare Party. Morgan has also stated he has previously voted for the Labour Party.