LONDON – Phone-hacking allegations spread beyond the fallen News of the
World to other British tabloids on Saturday, though the claims were strongly
denounced by their proprietors. Former journalists at the Daily Mirror and
Sunday Mirror – the main tabloid competitors to Rupert Murdoch’s cheap football shirts British
stable – reportedly said the illegal hacking of voicemails was widespread at
their papers too. The scandal has also rocked the British police and even given
Prime Minister David Cameron a rough ride, but has so far largely been limited
to the News of the World, which Murdoch shut on July 7 amid public outrage.
James Hipwell, a former Daily Mirror financial journalist jailed in 2005 for
buying shares before tipping them in the paper, said he was aware of hacking
because he worked next to the showbusiness desk where it was rife. “You know
what people around you are doing,” the 45-year-old told The Independent
newspaper.
“They would call a celebrity with one phone and when it was answered
they would then hang up. By that stage the other phone would be into their (the
celebrity’s) voicemail and they would key in the code.” “There was a great
hilarity about it.” Hipwell English Premier League football shirts worked at the Mirror for two years until 2000 when it was under the
editorship of Piers Morgan, himself a former News of the World editor. Hipwell
was sacked by the Mirror over the so-called “City Slickers” scandal. Morgan,
who is now a presenter for US television news network CNN, has denied having
any knowledge that phone hacking went on under his editorship and came out
fighting on Saturday. He made a fresh demand for an apology from Louise Mensch,
a British lawmaker on a parliamentary committee which quizzed Rupert and James
Murdoch on Tuesday, who claimed during the hearing that Morgan had admitted to
phone hacking. “Now then Louise Mensch – will you be making (a) public apology
for your lies in parliament about me, or do I have to write to (committee
chairman) John Whittingdale?” Morgan said on Twitter. “You could just have the
guts to accuse me of phone hacking outside of parliamentary privilege, and see
how you get on.”
Separately the BBC quoted an unidentified former Sunday Mirror
journalist who worked on the paper in the past decade and claimed to have
witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom. Trinity Mirror, the group
which publishes both papers, said its journalists work within the law and the
code of conduct of Britain’s
self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission. It said Hipwell’s Chelsea FC Football Shirt allegations were “totally unsubstantiated”. On Thursday it emerged
that police had requested files from a British data protection regulator which
published a report showing the non-Murdoch Daily Mail, the Mirror and the
Trinity Mirror-published The People were the biggest users of private
investigators to seek confidential information. Meanwhile police are to
investigate claims of phone hacking in Scotland, which has its own legal
system, and whether witnesses lied during a perjury trial last year. Former
News of the World editor Andy Coulson Chelsea home shirt – who went on to
become Cameron’s media chief before resigning and being arrested this year –
was among those who gave evidence.
