Hacking at the News of the World wasn’t limited to just the Millie Dowler incident and hacking in the industry wasn’t just limited to the News of the World. Following a case brought by Prince Harry alleging the hacking of his phone by journalists working for Mirror Group Newspapers, a judge was persuaded that numerous high-ranking members of staff had known about the illegal behaviour.1
One of those was the former editor of the Daily Mirror and now TV host Piers Morgan, who has steadfastly denied any knowledge of phone hacking.
Normally I’d be happy to accept the opinion of a judge who has many years of experience and who has heard all of the evidence in a case and has been able to devote substantial time to thinking through and internally debating the various possibilities.
However, as a matter of fairness to Morgan, I’m going to disregard the opinion of the judge and say that I believe Morgan completely.2
After all, why would he possibly lie about such a thing?
Of course, being innocent of any responsibility or guilt for the illegal actions carried out by some staff at The Daily Mirror doesn’t necessarily present Morgan in a positive light by default.
He was Editor at the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004 and phone hacking at the paper was claimed to have been commonplace from 1998 onwards.
So what was he doing during that time? As the editor, a big part of his job was to decide on the stories to pursue and to publish. As I understand it, for some six years he was happily publishing personal stories about people without ever being aware of the true source of the information on which many of those stories were based. The journalists were seemingly giving him vague assertions that a close personal friend had shared the information and he just accepted that every day for six years.
If I’ve summarised that correctly and fairly, would you consider him competent in his role or would you consider him some kind of dumbass completely out of his depth? Surely basic fact-checking should have been a key part of his job description to ensure he was protecting his employers from claims of libel. Based on what Morgan has said, would it be unfair to say his staff were engaged in illegal behaviour and the whole time he was too dim to see it?3 Apparently a number of those working for Morgan were in on the joke, while he was just the punchline.
I feel it also tells us a lot about the character of Morgan, though you may not agree, in that he was happy to publish intrusive and possibly damaging stories about people, seemingly without doing much checking into the correctness of those stories. Loyalty to staff is often an admirable trait in a boss, but when it could also negatively impact the privacy and rights of others, should blind faith in his staff have been enough for him to choose to publish such stories? To me, it suggests he prioritises getting the story over any concern for the subjects of those stories.
One person he appears to have particularly little concern for is Meghan Markle, the wife of Prince Harry. I’ve been clear before that I’m no fan of the British Royal family, but I don’t see any justification for using a privileged position to bully any of them, though I feel a little less firm in that view when it comes to the non-sweating one.
I’ll be honest, social media is a foreign land for me and I don’t even watch Spanish TV, so I’ve been reliant on the summaries of a few others to get to grips with his sad little fixation, including a Grazia article that offers a quick round-up of the highlights of his years’ long compulsion.4
Which is how I found his hatred isn’t just for Markle, but her husband too. My favourite quote from all his bitter outbursts has to be when he reportedly described Harry as “not the brightest bulb in the tulip patch.” Such beautiful irony – does he really get confused between lightbulbs and the bulbs flowers grow from? That’s got to be worth some more Tim Nice-but-Dim.5
But his dislike for Harry is quite rational insofar as it seems his anger has all grown out of rejection. Morgan enjoyed an hour or two in a pub with Markle before she met Prince Harry after which she cut Morgan off completely.
I get how that could hurt a bit, but grow up and get over it wouldn’t be bad advice would it? William Congreve may have been gender specific when he wrote that “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d. Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d”, but doesn’t Morgan appear a bit gender fluid in this context?
In the years since, he’s repeatedly taken advantage of his position as a TV celebrity to bully Markle. A man in a position of power using that position to pick away at a younger woman seemingly for the simple reason she picked a younger man who also happened to be a prince, instead of him.
Why do his bosses tolerate his hatred? Why does anyone listen or pay attention to him when he spends his time trying to publicly intimidate someone he feels such contempt for?
The media are just normalising hatred and aggression to point it seems that most people don’t even see how ugly and abnormal it is.
Morgan isn’t alone in his contempt for her though.
Jeremy Clarkson, a British journalist, car lover and farmer, wrote a piece that was published in a national newspaper and drew 25,000 complaints. I won’t dwell on all the details, but in it he claimed to hate Meghan Markle on a “cellular level”. I’ve tried researching this and as far as I can tell, the pair have never met. They certainly hadn’t by 2018.
How can anyone hate someone so profoundly when they’ve never even met them?
Just what drives a full-grown man, not a child, to act in such a spiteful way in public? I could understand if it was a six-year-old kid rather than a 60+ year-old man
One of my earliest memories of primary school must have been when I was five, maybe six, years old. I really liked this girl in my class, Ophelia d’Whelia. No, of course that wasn’t her name, it’s like 50 years or more ago, I don’t remember what her name was. Anyway, I wrote her a love letter and funnily though, apart from the name, I remember the text in its entirety.
To Ophelia
You are a pig
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 6
Yes, there was a reason I said I could understand a six-year-old behaving in such a way, but come on, show a little compassion for the kid. I knew nothing of the ways of love and my vocabulary wasn’t that extensive, I was working with a limited toolbox (if I were writing her a love letter today, clearly I’d say something like “you are a porcine beast”). Besides, I didn’t want her to know that I liked her. What madness would that have been?
A Dark Night
D’you think Clarkson could be struggling with some similar love issues too?
The screen wipes to a nighttime scene.
The rain was torrential now.
It’d been on and off since he’d parked the P38A Range Rover right at the end of the private track off the Old London Road. The double metal gates sealing the track had been secured by a substantial cable lock, but his battery-powered angle grinder had made quick work of it. Once through the gates, he’d secured them again with a similar-looking lock of his own, purchased earlier based on his research with Google Streetview. There’d be little traffic, if any, on this road at this time of night, but it would be stupid to risk everything by leaving the gate unlocked.
After secreting the Rangie, he’d quickly scouted his chosen parking place to see if his hunch about being able to force a way through the hedge onto the Charlbury Road in case of emergency was an option. It was, his decision to source a 4.6 V8 with its 280 foot-pounds of torque ensuring the improvised exit would be available if required.
With that knowledge secured, he’d started the trek to Diddly Squat Farm. As the crow flies, it would have been barely 2km walking, but he wasn’t a crow. His route was more circuitous, making the distance twice as long, but offering him maximum cover wherever possible.
Most people would hate the rain that had been lashing at him for much of the way, but he welcomed the cloak of invisibility it provided. Sounds would be muffled, making it safe to move at a pace and with less care than possible on a clear night, though he still was taking a wide berth around the few properties he had to pass. Even if someone did hear something, and they wouldn’t, the rain in the black air would render him little more than a phantom to the eye. Just a trick of what little light the new moon was casting down on the scene below.
The torrential rain had arrived so perfectly on time, he could have been operating with some kind of divine support. Moving silently from the field to the east of the farm buildings, he slid into the yard and made for the first door of the building to the right of the yard which backed onto the field he’d just passed through. The padlock was well-oiled and in good condition and his picks made fast work of the lock mechanism. He was quickly through the door, using a rubber wedge to jam the now unlocked door shut behind him. The open padlock would be obvious if anyone looked closely at it, but he only needed a few minutes, assuming the “key” worked.
He retrieved the zip-lock bag from his inside breast pocket and released the soft, satin pouch. He slipped the “key” from the pouch. This had not been cheap. He’d sourced it through the dark web, the maker claiming to have worked for the Bulgarian government on several operations. The maker had said he could work from a close-up capture of a high-res frame from The Grand Tour A Massive Hunt episode.
Make or break time. He held the hard solid orb up to the retina scanner and held his breath. One, two, three, four, nothing. It had all been for noth…the lock clicked and the metal door swung inwards.
Slipping quickly inside, the cone from his Maglite illuminated the far wall.
Just look at it. Covered from top to bottom with cuttings from newspapers and magazines and print-outs from websites. The pattern isn’t immediately obvious, but a few moments’ perusal shows that every cutting includes a picture of a couple. A famous couple. That’s Prince Harry and always accompanied by his wife…er…no, something’s wrong. It’s not Meghan. Well, yes it is Meghan, but not her face. On every single picture, Jeremy Clarkson’s face has been glued over Meghan’s head.
What kind of a sick puppy would do such a thing?
Turning to his right, he sees the desk pushed against the adjacent wall and only registers the large figure as it lumbers up clumsily from the chair in front of the desk. Dammit, he must have been asleep there!
The figure swipes twice at a switch on the wall, the second attempt flooding the room with light from the naked bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling, and then turns and lunges with a small pair of scissors with child-safe rounded tips.
He jumps back out of range and takes in the unexpected form of Jeremy Clarkson standing in front of him, a picture of Harry and Meghan attending a charity event and cut from the latest edition of Hello magazine adhered haphazardly to his forehead, hiding his left eye like a pirate with a patch.
Clarkson swats at it and the picture flutters manically to the floor. This wasn’t part of the plan he thought, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
“Hamster? What are you doing here?”
“Oh no, you’ve ruined the surprise,” replies Richard Hammond.
“But what are you doing here?” Clarkson asks again.
“Happy birthday big man, I was going to leave your gift here for tomorrow, but you may as well have it now.”
Hammond places the box he’d been carrying in his weather-proof backpack onto the table and lifts the lid. Clarkson bends down a little and lifts the two items out of the box. For a moment the old man looks almost like a child and his hands even seem to be trembling a little. Obviously, he can’t be radiating light, but there’s something about him in this moment.
“They’re perfect. Thank you hamster. Did you make them?”
“No, I found a guy on Fiverr who does all sorts of crazy stuff with dolls, but it was my idea to use the limited-edition Chewbacca Barbie7 as the base doll for you. It’s not as if the girls play with it anymore.”
“And Harry’s…er…a…an…Action Man!”
“Yeah, sure the scales are a little bit off as a result, but using a Ken doll just felt so really, really very wrong, even the Fiverr guy agreed. Oh yes, and look, see how he managed to hide the scar. That’s genuine La Prairie Skin Caviar Concealer blended with hot glue. I tell you, there’s no expense spared Jezza.”
Let’s leave it there, I’m feeling really uncomfortable spying on such a personal moment. Did you feel like we were intruding too? I think I’ll be giving myself an extra-hard scrub with the nail brush in the shower later. I really do feel quite grubby after that.
Now obviously I can’t comment for Jeremy Clarkson, but I suspect he doesn’t really hate Meghan, but hates what she represents. Of course, she represents multiple things.
Perhaps he hates commoners marrying into the royal family. Though Kate Middleton was a commoner and I’m not aware of him writing about his hatred of her on a cellular level.
Perhaps then he hates seeing a woman advance herself through marrying into the royal family. While there are plenty who would accuse Clarkson of misogyny, to the best of my knowledge he’s never written about his hatred of Kate Middleton on a cellular level despite her also being a woman who has advanced herself through marrying into the royal family.
Perhaps he doesn’t like seeing a biracial person with a black mother marrying into the royal family. Again, I can’t find evidence of him hating Kate Middleton on a cellular level, but of course, she’s white. To be clear, I’m not accusing Jeremy Clarkson of being a racist. I don’t know him, so clearly can’t comment. Clarkson himself is on the record stating he’s not racist, though he’s also on the record using the N-word.8
We’ve discussed biases before and how it’s very difficult for even ourselves to truly understand our own biases and how they affect our actions and judgements. I suspect that if pressed on the matter, Clarkson would struggle to explain why he feels such a way about a stranger. The reality is likely that she’s just a convenient writing device that allows him to spew out what he thinks is a highly amusing stream of consciousness that will make people laugh without even considering the true meaning of his words and the effect they’ll have on others. That’s probably not important compared to him being the centre of attention.
Don’t mistake that for defending or condoning his actions. I think he’s so far up his own arse, he never takes a moment to think about other people and couldn’t care less how his words might impact others, unless there’s a risk it could lose him money. Of course, that’s just my own opinion and he and you may feel very differently.
Which highlights what may be the biggest problem with his behaviour. He’s helping to normalise hateful behaviour. It’s hard to imagine he’s some kind of role model to anyone, at least I hope not, but when people read and hear such garbage, it’s just teaching them that it’s okay to pick on and bully others, even if you don’t have any legitimate reason other than it amuses you and your audience.
Obviously, one of the UK’s largest newspapers doesn’t share that concern as they saw no potential issues or reasons not to publish the inane witterings of a grown adult as he freely spouted hatred for millions to read. That should tell us a lot about the editorial decision-making process at that paper and arguably other newspapers.
While Clarkson is an extreme manifestation of the bias, if they’re happy to publish such extreme views, surely it becomes hard for them to argue that such bias doesn’t permeate right down through their organization, to be expressed in rather more subtle ways.
Before moving on from Clarkson, after writing what you’ve just read, I tried searching for how often he’d made public apologies to see if it was a trend, but found just the apologies for the comments on Meghan and the N-word incident. However, I found a Vanity Fair article9 that described how four years earlier Clarkson had written a piece calling for people not to attack Meghan Markle and pointing out how he and the readers didn’t know her. That offers quite the insight into the power of the press that someone working in the industry who must know how it works so intimately could be turned completely from one point of view to the opposite extreme in just a few years.
I’m not saying that to try and absolve Clarkson of any blame. The fault lies with him for being so stupid to write and share such pathetic and nasty comments, but it illustrates the force being applied to all members of society constantly and shows how we can all be manipulated when we choose to be weak.
Oh, and this really is the last comment, Clarkson also tried to defend his article by saying it’s hard to be funny and inoffensive (I’ve paraphrased). “You never hear peals of laughter coming from a health and safety seminar,” he also said.
I’ve seen enough genuinely smart and genuinely interesting people amuse and delight their listeners while talking about the most boring and mundane of subjects to know that claim has no truth. It’s just easier for lazy people to try to be funny without worrying about causing offence at the same time. And it’s also easier to blame other things rather than take responsibility for our own actions when things go bad.
- https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/15/which-mirror-bosses-knew-about-phone-hacking-according-to-prince-harry-ruling ↩︎
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/piers-morgan-issues-response-prince-31683401 ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0IJQ_s7No ↩︎
- https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/in-the-news/piers-morgan-meghan-harry-trisha-goddard-oprah/ ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6IucfZKCw ↩︎
- I’m nothing if not generous, so if you think your love life could use some help, feel free to use my love letter as is or remix it in your own special way. I’m kidding, don’t. Really, don’t. ↩︎
- Fudge, I knew they were getting more inclusive, but Wookies? https://barbie.fandom.com/wiki/Chewbacca_Barbie ↩︎
- Clarkson denies using the N-word, but you can make your own decision on whether you agree by watching the video on The Mirror site – https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/video-watch-jeremy-clarkson-use-3481201 (you may need to be in the UK to view it). Personally it sounds to me like he says it and in his apology video despite claiming he was just mumbling, he also accepts that it sounds like he said it – awkward – https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-27249038. I’m not so much younger than Clarkson and astonishingly, when I was a kid, I was also taught that very same rhyme. I’d have repeated it countless times without understanding what I was saying – I wasn’t even smart enough to work out, as I just have, that if you start with the thing that you don’t want to pick, you always end up picking the thing you do want (I’ve told you before I was a dumbass when I was younger). Set in the context of growing up in a very different Britain, I’m not comfortable to say that video proves Clarkson is an outright racist (he might be), but to use that rhyme, even substituting the N-word completely, still suggests to me at the very least a significant lack of racial sensitivity and emotional intelligence on his part. ↩︎
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230528172721/https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/01/jeremy-clarkson-meghan-markle-sun-column ↩︎