Piers Morgan has criticised Bernie Ecclestone’s claim that women cannot compete with men in Formula One racing.
In an interview at the Advertising Week Europe event in London, Morgan was asked what he thought about the Formula One Group chief executive’s comments earlier this week that women were not physically up to the task of competing with men.
The TV host and former newspaper editor said that in a sport such as F1, which involves driving skill rather than head-to-head physicality, he believed women could match men. “Women’s sport is not as revered as men’s,” he said. “It is an interesting debate. I find it hard to believe a woman could never be as quick as a man in Formula One. Why couldn’t that be?”
He went on to say he believed women should be paid the same as men in many – but not all – sports, citing the hugely successful US women’s football team as an example. “In England there is very little money available for TV rights for women’s football comparative to men,” he said. “In the US the women’s national team is watched more than the men both on TV and live [at a stadium]. They are world champions. Why shouldn’t they get equal pay? I am completely in favour of gender equality when the talent is the same.”
However, he added there were some sports, such as heavyweight boxing, where it would be “silly” to expect female exponents to ever be paid the same as the big drawcard men.
Morgan also weighed in on the debate about the public interest in publishing stories about the private life of culture secretary John Whittingdale.
He said that the idea that there was a conspiracy among several national newspapers, who knew but agreed not to publish, in order to hold a so-called “sword of Damocles” over Whittingdale regarding press regulation was rubbish.
“That would never happen,” he said. “Even in the old days Whittingdale would have been a very difficult story to publish with a demonstrable public interest defence. Post-Leveson [inquiry into press standards and ethics] a cold chill of Siberia has swept over Fleet Street. There was no chance that story was ever going to be published.”
He added that hew was concerned about the lasting impact that the Leveson inquiry might have on the UK press.
“What worries me is that the Leveson inquiry was very good in cleaning up the industry but do we want a neutered press in the UK,” he said. “Good or bad, the tabloid press in this country is one of the most free in the world. Yes, it has its poroblems, but the day you neuter it down to Pravda levels [of controlled content] is the day we get our own Vladimir Putin.”
Morgan, who writes a column for the Mail and co-hosts ITV’s Good Morning Britain, also revealed he had secretly been working on a documentary on gun control in America.
Morgan spent a decade in the US, as a judge on America’s Got Talent and for four years on CNN as Larry King’s replacement. During that time Morgan became heavily invested in the gun control debate, following incidents such as the shooting at Sandy Hook.
“My last year [at CNN] was completely dominated by the gun debate,” he said. “[Gun ownership supporters] don’t want to hear [gun control arguments] from you and don’t want to hear it from your accent.”
Morgan had one particularly memorable CNN interview with Alex Jones, creator of the Deport Piers Morgan petition. “I’d like to make a movie about guns in America,” he said. “I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it. The title is Bullets and Burgers, and there is a reason for that.” Morgan explained that the title was the name of a gun range and restaurant where a nine-year-old girl lost control of her Uzi gun and shot and killed her instructor by accident.
He said that US laws allowed places like that to operate but his son had been refused a non-alcoholic beer in a bar in Malibu because it still contained a minuscule amount of alcohol in it. “Yet that [nine-year-olds being allowed to shoot guns] is legal and remains legal,” he said. “My issue is that the constitutional right to bear arms supersedes any logic and is nonsensical. I want to make a movie like Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. That is what I have been working on for a while.”
