CNN's Piers Morgan has been testifying today before an inquiry into the country's phone hacking scandal. Morgan, who was the editor of two British tabloids, became a figure in the scandal when a British politician said Morgan had "boasted" about hacking into phones.
Morgan has denied the accusations and CNN has stood by him. If you don't remember, all of this stems from revelations that tabloids owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch routinely hacked into the voicemails of celebrities and crime victims.
Today, Morgan was being questioned about a 2006 article he wrote in which he said he was played a phone message left by Paul McCartney to his then-wife Heather Mills. Morgan, however, refused to answer questions about how he got that phone message because, as the AP reports, "doing so would compromise a source."
The AP adds:
"'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.
Earlier Morgan said he 'doesn't believe' he had ever listened to hacked voicemail message and dismissed earlier interviews in which he'd discussed phone hacking at length as having been based on rumor and hearsay.
Adding a bit of background, the BBC reports that in August Mills said a "a senior Mirror Group journalist admitted to her in 2001 that he had hacked into her voicemail."
The Independent reports that Morgan added that he was not "directly involved" in the "use of private investigators at the Daily Mirror."
Correction at 7 a.m., Dec. 21: Earlier we wrote that Morgan spoke to members of the British Parliament. In fact, he was testifying before The Leveson Inquiry, which was launched by Prime Minister David Cameron.
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