The controversial yet successful story of Piers Morgan
At the age of 17, Piers Morgan had a masterplan for becoming one of the best known journalists in the world. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he has come a long way ever since.
Born in Sussex, England, Morgan grew up in a middle class family and began showing an early affinity for the media. He would always be caught up with the current affairs, and by the time he was a teenager he had already starting writing news articles. One of his first few contributions included writing for the Mid Sussex Times, and then to Cricket Magazine at the age of just 14.
After opting to study journalism at Harlow college, he spent his initial years as a journalist at The Sun where we wrote a gossip column named ‘Bizarre’. The tactic to get his name out there by writing tabloid news worked. At the age of 29, he made history when media mogul Rupert Murdoch made Piers Morgan the editor of ‘News of the World’ magazine making him the youngest editor of a paper in Britain in over five decades.
All this built a perfect platform for Morgan to establish himself and put forward his often headstrong and controversial journalistic methods to the test for a huge population to consume. Having no fear of potential repercussions, he was very brave in his early years and even targeted the Royal Family.
“There is a type of snobbish, pompous journalist who thinks that the only news that has any validity is war, famine, pestilence or politics. I don’t come from that school.”
For Piers Morgan, everything was news. After his time at News of the World, he moved on to work for the Daily Mirror. Over here his stories became exponentially more controversial and his popularity grew to even outside of Britain. His first major controversy related to sports was the day before England was set to play Germany in the ’96 Euros football championships, The Mirror ran a headline with a photo which was not liked by most people.
Interestingly, Morgan had also planned a publicity stunt that involved driving a tank to the German embassy. Although he did apologize for these incidents he continued to remain at the center of everyone’s attention. Over the years he continued to be involved in other controversies as editor of The Mirror including talking about sensitive topics such as the Iraqi war. After nearly a decade at the Daily Mirror, he was fired and subsequently began working on his TV career where he even worked as a host for CNN’s prime time show. Although short lived, he could interview various big names at his time there. Ever since he hasn’t shied away from appearing on TV and has featured on various talk shows too. Currently he is the permanent co host for Good Morning Britain where he continues his classic blunt style of journalism talking about all sorts of things.
Piers Morgan does not shy away from expressing his thoughts on twitter either and has garnered a cult following of people who.. do not like him.
A fan of London based football club Arsenal, he takes to the platform to talk about various issues relating to football as well. Over the years he has been increasingly critical of Arsenal’s management and had even called for a sacking of Arsenal’s then manager, Arsene Wenger. Amongst some of these various controversial statements issued by Morgan in recent times included him calling Arsenal star Mesut Ozil disgraceful for turning down a pay cut. He has even called our Manchester United footballer Jesse Lingard who wished to punch him in an interview with the Sports bible.
Over the years he has also talked about women’s football and claimed they would never be as good as men’s football which could be taken as him belittling the sport. He has even expressed his views on the infamous Messi vs Ronaldo debate which has been going on for years.
Piers Morgan’s twitter is a goldmine of controversy and he is always involved with something or the other and he isn’t afraid to start an argument either.
Although he had settled down in TV, he continued to face controversies that dated back to his newspaper days, the phone hacking scandals for one went on for years and the world had been paying attention. He had apparently heard voice calls between Paul McCartney and his wife and was even called to testify.
Morgan has even been involved in physical fights as a feud between Jeremy Clarkson led to him being punched in the head at the National Press Awards. However they have managed to patch things up in recent years.
In conclusion, Piers Morgan has never been shy about sharing his opinions about anything at all and in the process he has made a name for himself, showing absolutely no sign of stepping out the spotlight anytime soon.
