• CNN star Piers Morgan refuses to discuss McCartney voicemail source

    Talk-show host and former Daily Mirror and News of the World editor, Piers Morgan, has denied knowledge of phone hacking during his time at the newspapers. ITN's Nina Nannar reports on England's High Court proceedings.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    Published at 12:15 p.m. ET: LONDON -- CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan refused Tuesday to disclose details about the most damning link between himself and Britain's phone hacking scandal: His acknowledgment that he once listened to a phone message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney for his then-wife Heather Mills.

    In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail tabloid, Morgan said he was played a phone message left by the former Beatle on Mills' answering machine, describing it in detail and noting that McCartney "even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone." Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have obtained the message honestly.

    On Tuesday, Morgan stubbornly refused to answer almost any questions about how he came to hear the message, saying that doing so would compromise a source. "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source," he said.

    Asked by inquiry chief Lord Justice Brian Leveson whether he could supply any information to back the assertion that he had heard the recording legally, Morgan said he couldn't.

    Updated at 12:10 a.m. ET: Morgan denies that during his editorship the Daily Mirror newspaper "suppressed" information that cell phones could be hacked in 1998 so that they could use it to spy on celebrities. "Absolute nonsense," he says. 

    Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET: Morgan denies any knowledge of paying police officers for information. "I've never been aware of any evidence of that, no," he says.

    Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET: "It doesn't necessarily follow that someone listening to someone else is unethical," Morgan says. "It depends on the circumstances in which you are listening to it."

    Updated at 11:28 a.m. ET: When asked to discuss the source of a voice mail message of former Beatle Paul McCartney to his then-wife Heather Mills, Piers Morgan refuses.

    He also defends the newspaper when it is asserted that the Daily Mirror was among the top offenders of the practice of phone hacking, saying,"You also well know that not a single person has made a formal complaint against a Daily Mirror journalist, so why would you say that?"

    Updated at 11:06 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan says the Press Complaints Commission code of practice was displayed prominently in the newsroom at the Daily Mirror, where he was former editor, and says it "informed every editorial decision I made."

    When asked whether an editor should have responsibility for his journalists, Morgan says, "The average editor is probably aware of about 5 percent of what journalists are up to at any given time."

    Updated at 10:42 a.m. ET: Piers Morgan begins testifying at Britain's Leveson Inquiry into media ethics via videolink from the United States.

    LONDON -- Former News of the World editor and CNN interviewer Piers Morgan will appear by videolink from the United States on Tuesday at a judge-led investigation into the ethics and practices of Britain's scandal-tarred press.

    He is expected to be grilled about comments he has made about widespread phone hacking at tabloid newspapers.

    Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp shut down the News of the World in July after a public outcry over the phone-hacking practices by British journalists at the newspaper.

    Morgan's appearance, along with a number of other witnesses Tuesday, has been widely anticipated and critics have been picking through old interviews and Morgan's autobiography "The Insider," in which the 46-year-old Morgan makes clear he knew of phone hacking as long ago as 2001.

    In an interview for GQ magazine before the public scandal over the practice, Morgan said he couldn't get too upset over hacking because "loads of newspaper journalists were doing it."

    And, in an earlier interview for BBC radio unearthed by one of his critics, Morgan appeared to go further, saying it was difficult to condemn private eyes hired to hack into people's phones "because obviously you were running the results of their work."

    Dave Hogan / Getty Images, file

    Former Daily Mirror and News of the World editor Piers Morgan and Rebekah Brooks (then Rebekah Wade), editor of the Sun newspaper, at the book launch party for Piers Morgan's memoirs, entitled "The Insider," on March 9, 2005 in London.

    Morgan maintains that he has never participated in phone hacking or knowingly run a story based on an illegally intercepted message.

    "I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone," he said in a statement in August.

    Actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and singer Charlotte Church are among those who have given evidence about press abuse, while executives and lawyers for Murdoch's News Corp have defended the newspaper.

    From newspaper man to TV star
    Morgan shot to national prominence when he was picked by Murdoch to run the News of the World at age 28. Under his tenure, the tabloid exposed Grant's liaison with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown and Princess Diana's late-night phone calls to married art dealer Oliver Hoare.

    It wasn't all down to good reporting: Morgan has acknowledged that bribes were paid to informants on rival titles.

    In 1995, Morgan left the News of the World for the Daily Mirror. His time there was marked by scoops and controversy, including an insider trading scandal.

    Among the newspapers to report it was The Independent, which said he allegedly bought 20,000 pounds ($31,000) worth of shares in a technology company the day before it was tipped in the newspaper's investment column. While two other journalists at the Daily Mirror were jailed, Morgan was not charged and kept his job.

    However, his editorship at the Daily Mirror ended in 2004 when he ran a faked photograph purporting to show a British soldier urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

    Morgan won a second life as a TV personality, eventually signing on as a judge of "America's Got Talent" and taking Larry King's old spot at CNN. So far, he's prospered. Ratings for "Piers Morgan Tonight" have been up 9 percent on last year's figures — good if not spectacular — and he appears to be reaching a younger audience.

    CNN spokeswoman Barbara Levin said the network was "extremely pleased" with how Morgan's program was performing and the company has so far stood by its star even as the phone-hacking scandal threatens to draw him in.

    'Despicable human being'
    "So heartwarming that everyone in U.K.'s missing me so much they want me to come home," Morgan joked earlier this year amid demands he return to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.

    Morgan's denial that he has had nothing to do with phone hacking is hard to square with a 2006 article in which he said he'd been played a phone message that former Beatle Paul McCartney left for his now ex-wife Heather Mills in the wake of one of their fights.

    "It was heartbreaking," Morgan wrote of the tape, saying that McCartney "sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."

    How did Morgan come to hear the tape? He's refused to say, but Mills told the BBC in August that "there was absolutely no honest way" he could have obtained the recording. McCartney echoed her sentiment, saying he'd apparently been hacked.

    Morgan's autobiography also abounds with tantalizing references to questionably obtained material: There's "a dodgy transcript of a phone conversation" and a celebrity's stolen laptop.

    And when actress Kate Winslet demanded to know how Morgan got her cell phone number, which she had only just changed, Morgan shrugged it off.

    "Look, Kate," he joked, "You don't get to be the editor of the Mirror without being a fairly despicable human being."

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    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  • Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese activist's guards

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    BEIJING -- "Batman" star Christian Bale was roughed up by security guards who stopped him visiting a blind activist living under house arrest in China.

    Video footage of the scuffle was shot by a camera crew traveling with the Hollywood actor as he promoted a film he has made in the country.

    CNN posted scenes of the confrontation between Bale and the guards on its website Friday.

    The run-in and publicity is likely to cause discomfort in China's government-backed film industry, which hopes Bale's movie "The Flowers of War" will be a creative success at home and abroad.

    The star's actions are sure to focus attention on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, guarded around the clock by plain-clothed and uniformed workers who have blocked dozens of reporters and fellow activists trying to see him in the past.

    Bale was to leave China on Friday and his representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

    Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images

    Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale and his wife Sibi are escorted by security guards as they arrive for the premiere of the "Flowers of War" in Beijing on Dec. 12.

    Bale, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for last year's "The Fighter," traveled Thursday with a crew from CNN to the village in eastern China where Chen, the blind lawyer, lives with his family in complete isolation.

    They were stopped at the entrance to Dongshigu village in Shandong province by unidentified men.

    'An inspiration'
    The video footage shows Bale asking to see Chen, with a CNN producer providing interpretation, but being ordered by one of the guards to leave. He then asked why he was unable to pass through. The guards responded by trying to grab or punch a small video camera Bale was carrying.

    "What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is," Bale was quoted as saying by CNN.

    Chen's case has been raised publicly by U.S. lawmakers and diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, all to no response from China.

    CNN said Bale first learned of Chen from news reports when he was in China filming "The Flowers of War," China's official submission this year for best foreign language film Oscar.

    "Chen Guangcheng is a newsworthy figure ... and as such it is in the interest of CNN's global viewers to hear from him," CNN said in a statement. "Mr. Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen."

    Chen, a self-taught lawyer who was blinded by a fever in infancy, angered authorities after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses by overzealous authorities trying to meet population control goals in his rural community. He was imprisoned for allegedly instigating an attack on government offices and organizing a group of people to disrupt traffic, charges his supporters say were fabricated.

    Although now officially free under the law, he has been confined to his home in the village eight hours' drive from Beijing and subjected to periodic beatings and other abuse, activists say.

    While Bale's visit focuses new attention on Chen's case, CNN's role raises questions about activism and advocacy among reporters, said David Bandurski, editor of the China Media Project website at the University of Hong Kong.

    "It made me instantly uncomfortable, wondering how it all came together. It raises questions about where the lines are drawn," Bandurski said.

    Politically sensitive subject
    The incident also drew strong interest — most of it highly positive — on social networking sites such as Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo.

    Having their star's name pinging across the Internet in connection with such a politically sensitive subject puts promoters of "The Flowers of War" in a bind. The film opens in China on Friday and next week in the United States.

    Directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, it is also the most expensive Chinese movie ever made, at $94 million, some of which came from the state-owned Bank of China.

    The movie centers on the 1937 sacking of the eastern city of Nanjing, a central event in China's pre-revolutionary "century of humiliation" and has been described by some critics as hewing to official propaganda portraying Chinese as heroic victims and Japanese as one-dimensional cartoon villains.

    While China has the world's third-largest film industry — both in box office and output — it has made relatively little global impact. Story lines are often heavily influenced by the ruling Communist Party, whose culture commissars must approve scripts and have final say over whether a film gets released.

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    The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.