Piers Morgan Emerges as A Staunch Defender of Murdoch [View All]

Rupert Murdoch has an increasingly outspoken defender on TV: Piers Morgan. After a week of relative silence on the subject of the ballooning hacking scandal, the CNN primetime host and one-time Murdoch tabloid editor has taken to the airwaves as a staunch champion of the Murdochs and their associates.

In an appearance on Wolff Blitzer’s afternoon program The Situation Room, Morgan lambasted a conservative member of the British Parliament for alleging that, in his memoirs, Morgan had indicated he had first-hand knowledge of phone hacking by Mirror reporters during his tenure as editor of that tabloid.

“The only intrigue in my book referring to phone hacking was when somebody warned me that my phone might be hacked and advised me to change my pin number. I was pretty outraged ,” Morgan said. (Earlier in the day, Morgan had denied flat out that any hacking had taken place at News of the World or the Daily Mirror during his time at the helm of those tabloids). “None of these things she says that I wrote actually exist in book.”

He then went on to offer a defense of the Murdochs as thorough as anything Rupert or James have said about the scandal on their own behalf. The hearings before Parliament in which the Murdochs and Rebecca Brooks appeared were “a most extraordinary spectacle,” he said.

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