Piers Morgan, English journalist and talk show host
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan (; né O'Meara; born 30 March 1965) is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer, and television personality. He began his Fleet Street career in 1988 at The Sun. In 1994, aged 29, he was appointed editor of the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch, which made him the youngest editor of a British national newspaper in more than half a century. From 1995, Morgan edited the Daily Mirror, but was sacked in 2004. He was the editorial director of First News during 2006 to 2007.
As a television presenter, Morgan has previously hosted the ITV talk show Life Stories from 2009 to 2021 as well as the CNN chat show Piers Morgan Live from 2011 to 2014. Morgan also co-presented the ITV Breakfast programme Good Morning Britain with Susanna Reid from 2015 to 2021, and was a judge on both America's Got Talent (2006–2011) and Britain's Got Talent (2007–2010). In 2008, he won The Celebrity Apprentice US appearing with future US President Donald Trump.In September 2021, it was announced Morgan would join News Corp as a presenter on their new television channel talkTV and as a columnist for The Sun and New York Post. The series will air in the UK, US, and Australia and is scheduled to launch in early 2022.Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror during the period in which the paper was implicated in the phone hacking scandal. In 2011, Morgan denied having ever hacked a phone and stated that he had not, "to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone". The following year, he was criticised in the findings of the Leveson Inquiry by chair Brian Leveson, who stated that comments made in Morgan's testimony about phone hacking were "utterly unpersuasive" and "that he was aware that it was taking place in the press as a whole and that he was sufficiently unembarrassed by what was criminal behaviour that he was prepared to joke about it". Morgan's outspoken views and controversial comments on Good Morning Britain led Ofcom to adjudicate on multiple occasions. On 9 March 2021, Morgan left the programme with immediate effect, following his criticism of the Oprah with Meghan and Harry interview. Ofcom received over 57,000 complaints from viewers, including a complaint from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex herself; Morgan was subsequently cleared of wrongdoing by Ofcom.