Cause he's about done!

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Piers Morgan has responded to the claim that he told Jeremy Paxman how to access people's voicemail messages, branding him an "ungrateful little wretch".

Writing on his Twitter page, Mr Morgan said: "Right - that's the last time I'm inviting Jeremy Paxman to lunch. Ungrateful little wretch."

The Leveson Inquiry had earlier today heard that Daily Mirror former editor Mr Morgan once told Jeremy Paxman how to access voicemail messages.

Newsnight anchorman Mr Paxman said he attended a lunch at Mirror headquarters in Canary Wharf in September 2002 where Mr Morgan teased Ulrika Jonsson about her relationship with former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, saying he knew about a conversation they had.

Mr Paxman said Mr Morgan explained to him how to access people's phone messages after teasing the Swedish television presenter about the conversation.

Mr Paxman told the inquiry: "He turned to me and said 'Have you got a mobile phone?'

"I said yes and he asked if there was a security setting on the message bit of it. I didn't know what he was talking about.

"He then explained the way to get access to people's messages was to go to the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234 and that if you didn't put on your own code, his words, 'You're a fool'."

The BBC Newsnight presenter said he remembered the lunch for two reasons: he wondered why he had been invited and because of what Morgan said.

"Mr Morgan was teasing Ulrika that he knew what had happened in a conversation between her and Sven-Goran Eriksson," said Paxman.

"I don't know if he was repeating a conversation he had heard or he was imagining this conversation.

"To be fair to him I should imagine both possibly because he probably was imagining it."

Paxman said Morgan put on a funny Swedish voice.

"It was a rather bad parody."

He added: "I don't know if he was making this up, making up the conversation.

"But it was clearly something he was familiar with and I wasn't.

"I didn't know that this went on."

The veteran presenter said Morgan's treatment of Jonsson was close to bullying.

"I didn't like it," he said.

Morgan, who now has his own chat show for CNN in America, appeared by video link at the hearing in December last year.

At the time details from the lunch had not emerged but he told the inquiry he was "still very proud of a lot of the very good stuff that both the Mirror and the News of the World did during my tenure as editor".

Tomorrow, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's former special adviser Adam Smith will give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry.

News Corporation lobbyist Frederic Michel will also appear.

Mr Smith resigned last month over his dealings with Mr Michel in relation to the BSkyB takeover bid.

Their evidence will lead to fresh scrutiny of Mr Hunt's role in the process.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ungrateful-little-wretch-piers-morgan-responds-to-jeremy-paxmans-claim-that-he-had-taught-him-how-to-phone-hack-7782177.html

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ho hum big deal huh?

Yeah.

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2/23/12

This weekend, five more journalists from a Rupert Murdoch-owned British tabloid were arrested as part of an ongoing bribery investigation.

The arrested journalists, all from The Sun, were later released, and have yet to be charged with any crimes. (As The Wall Street Journal explained last summer, arrests in the U.K. are often made early in a criminal investigation, and may not be followed by any charges.)

But the arrests have once again raised questions about whether Murdoch's News Corp. might face prosecution for bribery in the U.S. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Reuters reported last week that U.S. authorities are "stepping up investigations" of the possible bribery by Murdoch employees. An FBI spokeswoman told ProPublica, "We're aware of the allegations, and we're looking into it."

As we noted during the unfolding of the phone hacking scandal last summer, the U.S. has stepped up prosecutions of companies for bribery of foreign officials in recent years, and the fines for these violations can be steep. Companies can face prosecution by the Justice Department if they record bribery payments, or be pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fake record-keeping if they falsify documents to conceal the bribes.

The statute of limitations on civil Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges is five years. The New York Times reported Saturday that it was not clear when the allegations that led to the Sun arrests had taken place, "though some of those arrested have told friends that they were questioned on events from almost a decade ago."

Those arrested at The Sun included the paper's chief reporter, chief foreign correspondent and deputy editor. Last month, four other current and former Sun journalists were arrested, including the paper's crime editor and former managing editor. A police officer, a member of the armed services and an employee of the Ministry of Defense were also arrested this weekend "on suspicion of corruption," broadening the scope of the investigation from its original focus, bribery of police officers by journalists, to bribery of other officials as well.

The arrests were based on information provided by News Corp.'s Management and Standards Committee, an internal unit created in response to the phone hacking scandal last summer. The committee reports to Joel Klein, a former U.S. assistant attorney general and New York City schools chancellor who is now a News Corp. executive.

Our request for comment from News Corp. this morning was not immediately answered. In a January news release following the earlier arrests, the company reiterated its pledge "that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated."

The latest arrests, which were accompanied by police searches of the journalists' homes, have prompted anger and frustration from some British journalists, directed at the police and politicians driving the investigation, and at News Corp. executives.

"Once again, Rupert Murdoch is trying to pin the blame on individual journalists, hoping that a few scalps will salvage his corporate reputation," the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists told The Guardian.

The Sun's associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, called the investigation "a witch-hunt" that threatens press freedom, and said there was "nothing disreputable" about paying for stories.

"Sometimes money changes hands," Kavanagh wrote in The Sun. "This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad."

Last summer, the phone-hacking scandal resulted in the closure of another Murdoch-owned publication, the 168-year-old British tabloid News of the World, but News International executive Tom Mockridge reassured staff this weekend that Murdoch had pledged his "total commitment" to continuing to own and publish The Sun.

Murdoch will reportedly fly to London this week.

The publisher of the shuttered News of the World has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in phone-hacking settlements to celebrities, celebrity employees and politicians, including at least $200,000 to actor Jude Law and at least $63,000 to Guy Pelly, a friend of Prince Harry's, according to the Guardian.

http://www.propublica.org/article/new-arrests-in-murdoch-bribery-scandal-raise-question-of-u.s.-charges

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Dunno how it works other places, but in America, if you're the reason a billionaire might be looking at a stretch in the federal pen, it is not the time to make snarky jokes on Twitter, it is time to cop a plea deal and witness protection in exchange for testimony....