Moronic behaviour
Hackwatch, Issue 1685
No, he was “exclusively” revealing that Earl Spencer’s cash-in book about his sister Princess Diana contained “fabricated inaccuracies and examples of brazen falsity” concerning Moron himself.
“Earl Spencer and your publishers, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers,” Moron thundered. And a letter has been duly dispatched from his attack-dog of choice, Schillings, informing the aristo that his tome “contains false, defamatory and indefensible statements about our client”.
Moron is demanding nothing less than the recall and pulping of the book’s first edition and the payment of generous damages, which he will generously donate to the monarch’s own charity, the King’s Trust.
Mirror, Mirror
The “incredibly defamatory” claim in question? That Moron had been editor of the Daily Mirror in 1993, when the paper printed hidden camera photographs of Diana exercising in a private gym, and subsequently paid the princess enormous damages for the invasion of her privacy.
This – as Earl Spencer and his publishers have conceded – is not true: Moron did not become Daily Mirror editor until 1995. And he remained so until he was unceremoniously sacked over his very own photo scandal, in which he printed fake photographs of British troops supposedly abusing Iraqi prisoners. A point which any competent lawyer might bring up in response to Moron’s claim that he has been defamed, ie “lowered in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally, or disparaging the person in his business, trade, office or profession”.
The Eye accepts that it may not be best qualified to offer legal advice to anyone, but here are a number of additional reasons why an Arkell v. Pressdram response from Spencer might be appropriate in this instance...
Privacy on parade
While he may have had nothing to do with the 1993 photos of Diana, which he railed on his show were an “infamous and egregious invasion of her privacy which resulted in an expensive legal settlement amid global acrimony”, Moron’s own editorial record does contain several other standout privacy cases.
In 1995, as News of the World editor, he printed long-lens photographs of Victoria Spencer, the gravely ill first wife of Earl Spencer (for it was he), in the grounds of a private health facility, beneath the sensitive front-page headline “Di’s sister-in-law in booze and bulimia clinic”. Their publication was condemned not just by watchdog the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) but also by Moron’s own boss Rupert Murdoch, who said it was “clear in this case that the young man went over the top”.
The resulting privacy action by the Spencers went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. “If a privacy law is introduced, it will be largely thanks to the antics of gormless Piers Morgan,” the Eye noted that year.
But an even more significant legal finding in that area was still to come: the case of Naomi Campbell v. Mirror Group Newspapers, which concerned Moron’s publication of photographs of the model leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. This went all the way to the House of Lords and established that people can have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in a public place, which even Moron admitted was “effectively a back-door privacy law”.
All this, however, pales into insignificance when it comes to illegal phone-hacking, which has long since been established to have been happening on an industrial scale on the Mirror titles under Moron’s leadership as well as that of several other editors.
In 2015 a judge accepted that there was “convincing... evidence that Mr Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, knew about and took the benefit of the practice”, and in 2023 a judicial colleague reiterated that he “accepted evidence without hesitation [that] Mr Morgan knew that his journalists were involved in phone hacking”.
While Moron still protests his innocence and complains he wasn’t able to defend himself in court, his former employer Mirror Group Newspapers (now part of Retch plc) has long since given up trying to pretend anything of the sort, and has paid up tens of millions of pounds to hundreds of claimants on that basis.
Kiss and tell
And what of Diana herself? Moron was, just weeks before her death, responsible for publishing a faked photograph of her and boyfriend Dodi Fayed on the front of the Mirror, in which he “flipped” Fayed’s head to make it appear that the couple were about to kiss.
The incident was regarded as so serious that the PCC rewrote its code to include specific rules about the alteration of photographs.
Within six months of Diana’s death, Moron went on to make the Mirror a mouthpiece for Fayed’s father Mohamed and his, er, “fabricated inaccuracies and examples of brazen falsity” about her death, kicking off with Fayed’s self-penned “It was no accident” front-page splash on 12 February 1998.
Oh, and in 2003 Moron also published private letters sent to Diana by both Prince Philip and Earl Spencer – him again! – which the Mirror acquired from Di’s former butler Paul Burrell as part of the serialisation of his memoir in 2003. Spencer’s letters accused his sister of indulging in “manipulation and deceit” and urged her to get “appropriate and sympathetic treatment for your mental problems”.
Inevitably, Moron invited Burrell on to his show last month to agree with him that Spencer was awful for cashing in on Diana’s memory.
Next issue on sale: 22nd October 2026
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