The former TV editor of the News of the World has told the Leveson Inquiry how she “fell out of love” with the industry after being asked to write an untrue story about a celebrity being cheated on by her partner.<\/p>\n
Sharon Marshall, now a television critic for ITV’s\u00a0This Morning<\/a>, said she could not stay on at the News of the World, stating\u00a0she had been asked to breach the PCC code over the story. It involved a pregnant\u00a0celebrity whose partner had allegedly been unfaithful, though Marshall discovered the photo evidence supplied was two years old.<\/p>\n “Morally, it wasn’t going to happen,” Marshall said of the story, which she refused to carry out. “I made sure I killed it.”<\/p>\n She then resigned from the paper despite being asked to stay on. The individual who asked her to write the story, she said, remained\u00a0in their job.<\/p>\n She described the “tough” and competitive\u00a0enviroment at the tabloid. “You literally didn’t know what the person next to you was doing.”\u00a0She described editorial meetings with line managers where she would be asked what she had done to stand up a story, but not about sources.<\/p>\n She said she was “not involved in\u00a0any direct conversation”\u00a0in which she was asked to work unethically, adding that she\u00a0did not see any evidence of unethical behaviour with vast majority of those she worked for.<\/p>\n She denied a bullying culture at the tabloids, but said that “some editors are less than idyllic.”<\/p>\n