Coogan criticised the presenter’s “bullying behaviour”
Steve Coogan has accused Piers Morgan of being “symptomatic of the problem” with the British tabloid press, after the presenter stepped down from his role on Good Morning Britain.
Morgan was roundly criticised for discrediting Meghan Markle’s claims that she had suicidal thoughts whilst living in the UK, and after 41,000 people complained Ofcom about the comments the regulator opened an investigation into him.
However Coogan, appearing on Peston on Wednesday, called out the media at large along with Morgan, criticising the presenter’s “bullying behaviour”. Coogan said that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were attacked by the press not because of any “jet-setting hypocrisy” but because they broke the “golden rule” of not taking on the media.
“The tabloid press is controlled by a handful of tax shy billionaires with an agenda. Anyone who stands up to the press is attacked by them because they’re bullies,” Coogan said.
“They broke the golden rule, which is to leave us [the press] alone and we’ll go easy on you next time.”
“The fact that Meghan Markle and Harry were attacked has nothing to do with jet-setting hypocrisy, it’s because they broke the golden rule”
Steve Coogan says that the media attacked Harry and Meghan was because the couple took legal action against them #Peston pic.twitter.com/4aqMvgBA9o
— Peston (@itvpeston) March 10, 2021
As the interview went on, Coogan continued to criticise Morgan, bringing up Morgan’s involvement in the phone hacking scandal in the early 2000s when Morgan was editor of the Daily Mirror.
The actor said: “But they [Ofcom] should be investigating whether it was right for the man cited by dozens of claimants in the Mirror hacking litigation to have been allowed a platform to attack one of his accusers.”
Coogan has long been an advocate of press reform, and was in fact one of the celebrities that the Mirror Group ended up paying a settlement to after it admitted to intercepting the voicemails of hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and other major figures in the news.
As the interview went on though, Robert Peston clearly became more and more concerned with the extremely valid points that Coogan was making, as the Alan Partridge star became more and more impassioned. It has long been known that Coogan is not exactly the biggest fan of Piers, as he was one of the celebrities that the Mirror Group ended up paying a settlement to after it admitted to illegally intercepting their voicemails, along with those of politicians and other major figures in the news.
In the end either Coogan decided he had had enough of Peston’s defence of his former ITV colleague Morgan or he was cut off by the programme’s big wigs.
Steve Coogan cut off on #Peston as he lays into Piers Morgan… pic.twitter.com/WEymxhilJ1
— David (@Zero_4) March 10, 2021
