Talk:Piers Morgan
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[edit] Vandalism removed
"He is also the most arrogant man on the planet, with nothing to show for it." Hilarious, true but sadly not appropriate for a Wikipedia introduction. Kordos —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.70.66 (talk) 23:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Balanced
- This does not sound like a balanced, factual entry to me. Time for a rewrite maybe...
- He's had quite a controversial career hasn't he. Which particular areas don't you think are balanced? --Oscarthecat 18:16, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I think the whole article is unfair. In this article, his achievements as a brilliant newspaper man, with a nose for what sells, are overshadowed by highlighted negative aspects of his career. Also, there is no mention of the accolades and numerous awards he won in his years as a writer of the Bizarre column for the Sun newspaper or in his time as an Editor, or the fact that he was integral in creating the Pride of Britain award. Not to mention the many scoops he splashed, only for the stories to be picked up the media worldwide.
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- Is that you Piers? -- Mickalos 03:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
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- It should be mentioned that he's a fuck; a sad cunting fuck. That's not point-of-view by the way just fact. Although as subjecive fuckers everything we see is pov n all truth is socially constructed :S
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[edit] Very biased/negative/unfair
I think the whole article is unfair and should be rewritten. In this article, his achievements as a brilliant newspaper man, with a nose for what sells, are overshadowed by highlighted negative aspects of his career. Also, there is no mention of the accolades and numerous awards he won in his years as a writer of the Bizarre column for the Sun newspaper or in his time as an Editor, or the fact that he was integral in creating the Pride of Britain award. Not to mention the many scoops he splashed, only for the stories to be picked up the media worldwide.
A resumé of Morgan's career is likely to be negative, in any case circulation of the Mirror declined during his editorship. You seem to know him rather well, perhaps you could add more details, even if your comments as largely POVs would not be within WP policy. A detached observer would note how many of the claims in Private Eye have not yet found their way in to the article, and it is worth pointing out that Morgan has never sued, despite years of such "defamation". Philip Cross 17:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
- Firstly, this is not a resumé, it is an encyclopedia entry. Secondly, by using the word 'negative' you are conceding POV. Thirdly, surely 'claims' - by Private Eye (revealingly refered to as 'the eye' in the article text) or anyone else - are by definition unsubstantiated and thus unsuitable for such an encyclopedia entry. And how the hell could mention of awards, scoopes and circulation figures (such as achieved with News of the World) be 'POV'?? Coil00 23:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Why don't people who are unhappy with the state of an article ever sign their names? --^pirate 18:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't agree that this is a very biased article, but I think it could do with some revision. The general section, while tending toward the negative aspects of Morgan's career, does not carry any particular tone that I can sense. However, for the sake of balance, it would likely be worthwhile putting in facts regarding his awards and accolades. I cannot see how this would not be neutral - it's simply stating as fact his recognised achievements. --User:Blaise Joshua
I found the tone of this entry biased against. Morgan, whatever one thinks of his editorial decisions, is a public figure whose opinions are often sought by the likes of BBC1's Question Time and Radio 4's Any Questions?, and whose well articulated opinions tend to engage with many people in the country. - The Missing Hour
- As an encyclopaedia, we are not in a position to say whether someone's opinions are well articulated or not. We have to report the facts, which has been done in the article. --Sam Blanning(talk) 12:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I take your point, but the section on him and Ian Hislop seems by its last paragraph to have descended into little more than gossip and hearsay. Is this really justified in an encyclopaedic entry for a journalist and broadcaster? - The Missing Hour
Apart from the Hislop section, this has been wiped of POV, and nicely. It's not that I like the guy,but it's better to damn wuth damning facts than without. The POV header can go I think. Coil00 01:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] First look; unbiased view
I don't know what this article was like before but it seems pretty neutral to me, when I came to this page I was expecting it to be full of bile and vitriol. This is a good example of how efficient Wikipedia can be sometimes. Of course this only stands for todays date, god knows what changes could go on... TiHead 09:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] America's Got Talent
Why is he a judge on an American talent show? He's a disgraced tabloid paper editor... did they just need a generic "nasty male British judge" or something? TR_Wolf
- I expect he was looking to expant his media interests, probably has a relationship with Fuller and fulfils the Cowell role nicely, allowing Cowell to pocket the cash without having to subject himself to the torture of watching that crap every week. Rockpocket 17:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes. (I like the show by the way) I'm not familiar with American Idol but I think they needed a mean old British stereotype who everyone can disagree with. 156.34.216.82 20:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- American Inventor and American Idol have a british judge. FellowWikipedian 11:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
- I knew that, already. : ) 156.34.216.161 19:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
- American Inventor and American Idol have a british judge. FellowWikipedian 11:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Private Eye allegations
As per WP:BLP we must be extra careful with criticism of living people. I have a few problems with the PE content as it stood. Firstly PE is a satirical magazine and therefore hardly a good, reliable source for factual information. Therefore the should not be quoted as "illustrating" that Morgan was a spectator. This supposes this is the truth, rather than an opinion. Instead we must make it clear this is the opinion of PE, i.e. they suggest it. Moreover, the phrase "a badly-compiled "paste and scissors" job" is highly unencylopaedic and should not be in any article unless the whole thing is in quotes and sourced. Remember this topic of this article is Morgan, all we have to do is report that he is criticised by PE and why, we don't use his page to further those criticisms. Rockpocket 17:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is not good enough. The guidelines say that content must be fair and impartial, not bland and inoffensive. "Paste and scissors" has no value attached to it, pejorative or otherwise: Wikipedia itself is a "paste and scissors" job. Private Eye is not a journal of record, but that does not mean that items it publishes are any more or less likely to be true or untrue than items published in The Sun or The Guardian. Private Eye does have the reputation that it publishes some items which are factual. You do not prove that on this occasion Private Eye is an unreliable source. The subject of the article is indeed Piers Morgan, and his book The Insider, published when he was in disgrace, throws serious light upon his character and motivations and it is valid to discuss the book in an encyclopædia article. The original Private Eye article lists a number of entries in what was described as a diary, and illustrates that they are factually inaccurate. Morgan's previous books have been write-ups of pop groups, written for an uncritical audience. Some of the content of these no doubt derived from first-hand experience during his time as a pop music journalist, but it is fair to assume that some originated in articles written and published by others. This is no disgrace. It is probable that he employed editorial assistance, again this is no disgrace as long as he had the final say and takes responsibility for the final product. The same applies to The Insider: if he had an assistant who compiled press cuttings on his behalf, again, this is not necessarily a demerit on Morgan's part. However, this book seeks to be taken more seriously than a pop bio, and this does put Morgan under greater pressure to be accurate. Private Eye has shown him to be inaccurate significantly often. It published the Morgan claims alongside accounts which are widely accepted as reliable. The raison d'être of The Insider was to portray Morgan as an insider, the confidant of movers and shakers. The material inaccuracies show that this was not true. If he was not an insider, then he was an outsider, a spectator. This is not "opinion", it is a proper conclusion derived from the evidence.
- These are extracts from the professional reviews on Amazon
- And also these are the Amazon reviews written by readers
- On the other hand, the Piers Morgan article as a whole is not well written and there is just cause to be uneasy about it. Part of the problem is that readers unfamiliar with Private Eye, who will look to the Private Eye article for enlightenment, will find what really is a badly-written paste and scissors job. The Private Eye article needs to be cut up in pieces and re-written as a series of coherent wholes, one of which should explain more fully the nature of Private Eye's angle on journalists and media people in general and Piers Morgan in particular. Also, Piers Morgan has had a colourful career to date and much (most?) of what has been written about him has been unsympathetic. Even his mother would have to admit that Piers Morgan is a chancer, with the morals of an alley-cat, who sails close to the wind. There is no shortage of persons around who would put it in stronger terms than that. However, it is possible to use the paste and scissors to a more objective degree than is so far evident, which I will attempt to do.
- Guy 23:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
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- If you can source the phrase "paste and scissors job" to Private Eye then by all means replace it with the citation. Rockpocket 01:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
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- I have just done a complete re-write of the article which should have taken care of the queries, albeit it might have raised further objections but, get this, I went out to make a coffee and came back to find that the cat had trodden on the keyboard and sent the whole lot into a void in cyberspace. I will have to do proper backups as I go in future. I do not know when I will find time fo do it all again, not for several days. Guy 05:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
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- Sorry to hear that. I look forward to see what you have come up with. Rockpocket 07:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Unreferenced section
In response to the editor who removed the {{unreferenced}} tag: this is an encyclopedia, not a page for those wishing to make a point about Morgan. Per Wikipedia's verifiability standards, "[t]he threshold for inclusion ... is verifiability, not truth (emphasis from the policy page)." Unsourced data may be challenged or removed at any time; it is incumbent on the editor including the data to cite a reliable source for any data, not on the reader to "watch the television or read the magazine", having been forced to do his or her own research. Please also read the biographies of living persons guideline for tips on presenting data, positive or negative, in a manner that is as neutral as possible. The section I have tagged gives no hint that any rebuttal even exists to the overtly negative presentation. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 12:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Obviously you have not come across any material giving an alternative or opposing view or you would have edited the article to take it on board. What you should be saying is "I have not personally checked out the references" not "unreferenced".
- I made the major points in the section above. It is a badly written article. Most of what is written about Morgan is hostile, much of it more so than what Private Eye has written (check out what Alastair Campbell has written about him, for example). I am doing a radical re-write, but one problem is that this necessitates links to articles not themselves well written (not least Private Eye}. For example, this article does not mention the Naomi Campbell episode, or at least not in the sort of detail which would paint Morgan in a good light. There are two opposing views about Morgan's departure from the News of the World, both need to be explored and conclusions drawn. It is going to be pov whatever, saying he is a jolly decent chap is just as pov as saying he is a bounder, and neither would be very useful at all, but either might be better than just setting out to be bland and inoffensive. What Private Eye has written is verifiable, the back-numbers are there to prove it. Likewise recordings of the television programme are easily available. There are positive things about Morgan and possible explanations of things he has done, both of which need to be included to be fair to Morgan. The alternative is to wait and let Tom Bower do the job.
- Guy 10:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Image moved
Per Wikipedia's fair-use criteria, only free-use images can identify living, public people; the current image has been moved to accompany the relevant text. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 14:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removal of the The Apprentice UK template
Regarding the removal of {{The Apprentice UK}} from this article - I have started a discussion at Template talk:The Apprentice UK proposing the removal of this template from each of the celebrity articles to which it links. Please contribute your opinions to a discussion there.
[edit] Segway
The section about Morgan falling off a Segway is far too long. It's got three separate citations, for god's sake - that's at least two more than is necessary.
It seems to me that this is an extremely minor episode in Piers Morgan's life, and of interest only to POV-pushers because of the George W Bush connection. 80.254.147.52 13:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The fact that this is a 'minor' episode in Piers's life is unimportant - it serves to highlight his incredible hypocrisy and discredits his satirisation of George Bush. Surely through asserting that only a moron can fall off a Sedgway, he is categorising himself as this. How can anyone take him seriously!? Richard Price —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.242.221.2 (talk) 14:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
- Probably one mention of the Segway incident is sufficient. Any less would arguably violate NPOV, since it would be intentionally omitting something negative about him. Any more is overkill, and thus also arguably a violation of NPOV. 66.234.220.195 (talk) 05:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- User Piers Morgan (talk · contribs) deleted this and I reinstated it, but then changed my mind; the reports are not actually negative; they express amusement at the irony. Morgan himself essentially admitted that falling off made him an idiot too. If there were a rant about it by a notable paper somewhere then it would be difference, but as it stands it reads as far too anecdotal. BigBlueFish (talk) 20:15, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth section needs to be changed.
The paragraph is written from a perspective that paints Manigault-Stallworth as the aggressor. The implications in the paragraph cannot be verified outside of interpreting the episode of television that aired only hours before the entry appeared (the episode only first aired about 6 hours ago).
The paragraph is not neutral, it does not recount facts, and it contributes nothing to anyone reading an entry to learn about Piers Morgan (except maybe to get the feeling he'd been abused by Manigault-Stallworth on a reality TV game show...)
please change it.
[edit] Removal of the Reuters Story Regarding America's Got Talent
There was this line in the entry and I removed it:
"Piers Morgan, according to Reuters news, has been replaced as a judge on the popular American television show, America's Got Talent. Although no offical reason was given, it is rumored that Piers impregnated a former contestant on Season 2 of America's Got Talent."
There weren't any citations, and I did a search on both Google News and the Reuters site and couldn't find any mention of him being replaced. I went to the NBC Website and he is still listed as a judge. He himself just wrote a newspaper entry where he is in the southern U.S. doing auditions. The part about the "rumor" just seemed too wrong to leave it on the page and wait for discussion.
Oh, and I started a new section for this because the other section regarding "America's Got Talent" was just getting ugly.--Vingold (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Omarosa
I noticed that the section Omarosa in the Feud part of the article keeps being deleted by a certain same user. However, there has been more than a few attempts to add this to the feud section, and I believe that this issue needs to be resolved. 1. One user should not be deleting the section that so many people feel needs to be added. 2. This user gave reason that "feud" is a long-lasting quarrel. But another definition of feud is a "bitter quarrel", which definitely qualifies Omarosa to be included in the feud. 3. Perhaps it is not right to include Omarosa, for argument's sake. But personally, I feel that this needs to be brought up anyways, in order to prevent this user from dominating the neutrality of this article. If you check the history log, this user hasn't been very neutral with the whole topic. Unrandomperson (talk) 20:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
- The material referring to Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth is already covered in sufficient detail earlier on in the article, under "Career in television". It is clear that this refers to a "reality" programme (though this link should be in the article). As everybody knows, the principal reason for "reality" programmes is to put a set of mis-matched individuals together so they cannot escape, in the expectation that the feathers will fly. Nobody wants to watch night after night of people sitting around interacting with the kind of civility one sees at a Vicarage tea party. Therefore, on Big Brother, The Apprentice, I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, you are going to get conflict, possibly violent conflict - it goes with the territory, it does not merit any further comment. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "feud" as - active hatred or enmity, hostility, ill-will; a state of bitter and lasting mutual hostility; a state of perpetual hostility between two families, tribes, or individuals, marked by murderous assaults in revenge for some previous insult or injury. "Active hatred" implies going on for a period of time (else the definition would just be "hatred"), rather longer than the duration of a television programme or series, especially when conflict is "built in" to the format. The normal accepted English usage is the third definition, which is equivalent to a "vendetta" in a gangster film. Chambers (which is a more "popular" English dictionary) defines it thus: "1- a long-drawn-out bitter quarrel between families, individuals or clans; 2- a persistent state of private enmity". It is difficult to describe the relationship between Piers Morgan and Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth as a "feud" under any of these definitions, any more than one would describe the business between Shilpa Shetty and Jade Goody as a "feud". That is not to say that the sections describing the relationships between Morgan and Ian Hislop and with Jeremy Clarkson are not over-long and in need of pruning, however, that was the subject of a similar editorial dispute about a year ago. Wikipedia guidelines require articles about living persons to be neutral (see the box at the top of this page). This is difficult when the person concerned is not regarded neutrally by the public, saint or sinner. Morgan is a person the British public love to hate, but he is still entitled to a neutral article. Much material casting him in a poor light has been excluded, despite good references to support it. On the other hand, there are certain aspects of Morgan's handling of celebrities which are regarded favourably by the public, in particular the Daily Mirror pictures and reports about Naomi Campbell and her alleged problems with artificial stimulants over which she launched an ultimately successful lawsuit. Morgan did not go to university - reference to this was excised - despite it giving him a chip on his shoulder towards those who did (not uncommon in media circles), especially the likes of Hislop and Clarkson who have made fun of him. Mentions of his authorships have also been cut - he started out writing puff biographies of boy bands and his supposed memoir "The Insider" was allegedly made up and assembled from newspaper cuttings - but mentions of these have been pared down. Much of the problem with this article historically has come about through another editor (not me) for whom "neutral" is synonymous with "bland and inoffensive". Guy (talk) 00:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with this. No need to mention Omarosa in the feud section. The likelihood that her and Piers would ever cross paths again outside of a reality show are slim to none. She's been covered earlier in the entry.Vingold (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Can someone add this please
He said in his Mail on Sunday column that he is of Irish descent.
- I believe this is mentioned in one of the articles cited as a reference in the biographical section. It also mentions that his mother detached from his father Mr. Pughe and remarried Mr. Morgan, whose name Piers adopted. Guy (talk) 16:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Autobiographical edits
This article was recently edited several times by user Piers Morgan (talk · contribs). Obviously, this may or may not actually be Piers Morgan. I haven't added it yet because it hasn't actually been confirmed that the user really claims to be Piers himself, but if so then the {{Notable Wikipedian}} template is due here. BigBlueFish (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] "Headhunted"
Hence, is it important? He says lots of different things about himself, and if he says he was particularly sought after, fine. I don't see how it matters though; the circumstances of one's recruitment are very rarely discussed or given note. BigBlueFish (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
- It is relevant in the context of his departure from the News of the World and his arrival at and departure from the Daily Mirror. It gives a small illustration of the man and his character allowable under Wikipedia guidelines, wheras a simple statement describing him as an egotist with a gift for self-aggrandisement and self-publicity would be quickly removed, no matter how accurate. Guy (talk) 03:03, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
