One can never underestimate the irresistible pull on some people of the opportunity to type "fecal mater" into an EO thread. The pull is almost as strong as the Pee Effect is in morphing as many threads as possible into discussions of all things Number One.
With regard to Morgan, under most circumstances I would agree that it was simply a matter of misstating a fact, and would hardly characterize his misstatement as a "whopper" of a lie as so many news headlines and Blogs have done, but not in this case. He has a history and a self-proclaimed position of being anti-gun, has on more than one occasion stated "guns are evil," and takes the position that civilians should not be allowed or own or posses guns for any reason under any circumstances. Morgan's position is that more guns necessarily equal more crime of all kinds, not just violent and gun-related crime, but murders and other violent crime specifically.
In the interview with A.W.R. Hawkins, Hawkins had correctly cited Virginia as a typical case where there was a direct correlation between an increase of gun sales with a decrease in violent crime. That's a situation which Morgan finds unacceptable, as it puts guns in a favorable light with respect to crime. In a desperate attempt to discredit Hawkins in the most dominating way possible, Morgan fabricated on the spot a statistic about Virginia specifically, since Hawkins specifically mentioned Virginia, and used the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy (citing FBI statistics) to bolster his assertion.
Hawkins' statement was about 2012, and it was a true statement. Morgan's statement was about 2009, and it was not a true statement, all or in part. It could be viewed as a misstatement of the facts Morgan had simply gotten the year wrong, and it was 2008 or 2010 instead of 2009, but the fact is that Virginia guns sales have increased steadily since the year 2000, while violent crime has decreased by a corresponding rate over the same period. (Other factors are likely involved, however, like the fact that Virginia abolished the parole system in 1995, which has very likely had some effect on crime rates). Guns sales and a decrease in crime in Virginia have both been at their most dramatic since 2005. Another fact is that Virginia has never been ranked higher than 20 since 1950, the year in which the statistics first became a tracked statistic. Virginia has never even had a city or town where the murder rate was number one (Richmond has been ranked as high as fifth of cities between 100,000 and 250,000 people).
But the kicker is Morgan's 17-second "apology" that took place on-air, 38-hours later, during an unrelated interview with the Newt Gingrich. He admitted that Virginia did not have the highest murder rate in 2009, and said it was an "inaccurate fact," which is a whopper of an oxymoron. There's no such thing as an "inaccurate fact," it's either a fact or it isn't. A fact, by definition is something that is indisputable. Something that is indisputable cannot therefor be inaccurate. People use the term "inaccurate fact" to lessen the blow of being caught in a lie, to impress upon others that they had their facts straight, but they were merely wrong about them. "Whoops, sorry, no harm no foul." Morgan probably learned that term from the NSA, who recently removed a page of what NSA Director General Keith Alexander described as "inaccurate facts" from their Web site detailing how vigorously they protect the privacy and other Constitutional rights of Americans. The "inaccurate facts" on the NSA Web site were, not surprisingly, blatant lies, just like Piers Morgan's lie about Virginia.
So, like many people, especially liberals (I added that to comfort Leo), Morgan prefers the lie to the truth if the lie gets him what he wants. That more or less makes Morgan a piece of fecal matter, if ya ask me.
One of my favorite usages is ever popular "true facts," which is a gross redundancy at best, and necessarily assumes the possibility of "false facts" to exist, which, of course, can't.