Piers Morgan Whistleblowing Hypocrisy

Piers Morgan is not happy. He wants the world to know that he is not happy. And what makes him not happy right now is that word all fans of 60s cult TV series The Prisoner will know well: information. Yes, Piers Morgan wants … information. He’s not going to get it, but believes that, by hook or by crook, he will.

Morgan is also angry. And I mean, he’s angry. Boiling angry. He is also totally devoid of self-awareness, and so has attacked Lily Allen for “attention seeking”. Yes, the clown who gets himself a table at Chiltern Firehouse just so he can shoot his gob off to all the other diners about how famous he is is calling “attention seeking” on others.

Morgan’s lack of self-awareness has also extended to claiming that Charlotte Church is “virtue signalling”. No TV host is more virtuous than Piers. Allegedly. But it is in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing that he has really wound himself up. Building on his claim “Muslims can do a lot more to help police & Mi5 root out radicalised members of their communities” (did he bother asking if they already did?), he has demanded action.

“There must be more Muslims can do as a community to spot these killers in their midst before they commit carnage … I want more Muslims to do more to help us all get rid of these medieval ISIS monsters” he claims, before having a rare moment of honesty: “No young impressionable Muslim is going to give a stuff what I, a middle class, middle aged white guy, has to say about their religion”. Nobody else does, either.

But do go on. “It’s time for Muslim community leaders to dramatically step up the war on these twisted, deviant minds abusing their religion … And it’s time for non-violent Muslims everywhere to step up their efforts to identify, isolate, expose, and name and shame those who are trying to drag Islam into a gutter of sickening unrelenting terror”.

Did we all get that? Right. Now, I have just the one problem with this, and that is that Piers Morgan is right now standing in the draughtiest of glasshouses. So is any other member of the Press Establishment. Because the idea of informing on others in their community is something that for Old Media types like Piers Morgan is Streng Verboten.

And before anyone says “phone hacking”, it’s not just about phone hacking. The press, and by that I include the Daily Mirror when Morgan edited it, was also doing illegal blagging, hiring Private Investigators, having targets tailed and otherwise snooped on, having their bins rifled through, trying to find out bank and NHS records, who targets met, who they shagged, and most likely the shop where they bought the equipment.

Then when it came to … information, they would not breathe a word of it to anyone else. Not a soul. The culture of press Omertà ensured nobody else would get to know who they used to get the illegally obtained information, how much they paid, who the targets were, or indeed what laws were being broken. When Nick Davies blew the whistle on phone hacking, it was Piers Morgan who spat “Judas” at him the next time they met.

Piers Morgan is the worst possible example of someone playing the “Do as I say, not as I do” card. You Muslim chappies out there - go inform the nice Police people, d’you hear? But don’t expect Piers and his pals to expose all the illegal behaviour that forms the stinking underbelly of the profession that made him famous. Pass the sick bag.