As for Piers Morgan, it appears that he is what he appears to be: “a kind of overgrown naughty schoolboy,” as Roy Greenslade, a veteran British journalist and media watcher (he is a columnist at the Guardian and a professor of journalism), put it. Morgan’s cheekiness coexists with some less adorable qualities. He has committed a number of infamous ethical breaches, including buying stock based on information from his own business writers at the Mirror (the writers were fired, and one of them did jail time), and publishing pictures of the then wife of Princess Diana’s brother taken while she was a patient at an addiction-treatment center. “He just doesn’t believe there are rules for him,” Greenslade said. He’s a good interviewer, though, “and hugely confident, and he has charm, and the combination of those factors makes him a natural successor to Larry King, really.” Like many other people, Greenslade is puzzled by CNN’s “taking the route of entertainment over news.” Not that Morgan won’t be able to tackle serious subjects—“but he will not broach them in a serious way. He’s hugely quick-witted and a fast learner, and he can pretend. He’ll fake it—but will it work?”
