With Report, a Tabloid Editor Is Again Part of the Story

In the four months since he became editor of The Daily News, Mr. Myler, 59, has made it clear that he identifies with the sensibilities of the common man.

When a jury was unable to reach a full verdict in the trial of a police officer charged with raping a teacher, the front-page headline in The Daily News screamed, “What Does a Woman Have to Do to Prove She Was Raped?”

The headline for another cover story, on teachers accused of unseemly conduct with students, read: “FIRE ’EM! Exposed: Perv Teachers Still on Payroll.”

But every now and then in his rollicking journalistic adventures, Mr. Myler has become the story, or at least an integral part of it — and that became the case again on Tuesday, when he found himself a prime target of a British parliamentary panel’s report on the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers.

The panel concluded that Mr. Myler had misled them about his knowledge of the illegal behavior, which puts him at risk of being cited for contempt of Parliament.

Mr. Myler took over as editor of The News of the World in 2007, when the phone-hacking scandal was just beginning to rattle the paper, and he was still editor when Mr. Murdoch closed the London tabloid last summer.

Mr. Myler declined to comment beyond a prepared statement saying he stood by his testimony and expected to be exonerated.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the owner of The Daily News, said in an interview on Tuesday that he had “total confidence” in Mr. Myler and indicated that subsequent information would clear him. “It’s not the only report that will be out,” Mr. Zuckerman said, declining to be more specific.

How to cover the report was a ticklish question for Mr. Myler. The panel also concluded that Mr. Murdoch was “not fit” to run his company, something that would ordinarily be delicious fodder for The Daily News. But with Mr. Myler caught up in the story, nothing was published on its Web site on Tuesday.

Mr. Myler’s career has taken him back and forth across the Atlantic. He was born in Liverpool and, without a college degree, entered journalism at the Catholic Pictorial news agency. Soon he became a Fleet Street reporter at The Sun, and then at The Daily Mail. By 1992, he was editor of The Sunday Mirror, and later The Daily Mirror.

Those who have worked with Mr. Myler described him as an ultracompetitive newsman.

In 1993, he caused considerable national agitation when he published pictures in The Sunday Mirror of Princess Diana working out at a gym. The photographs had been bought from a London gym owner who took them with hidden cameras.

Mr. Myler left journalism briefly to become head of a marketing organization for a rugby league. He then reprised his role as editor of The Sunday Mirror; a controversial story ended his run.

In April 2001, he published an article that raised racism as a potential motive of two soccer players then being tried on charges of attacking a Pakistani fan. The judge ruled that the article had poisoned the trial and ordered a retrial. Mr. Myler resigned three days later, and the paper was fined for contempt of court.

Some thought Mr. Myler’s journalism career was over, but Mr. Murdoch had other ideas. In short order, he hired Mr. Myler as one of the top editors at The New York Post. He was not in charge, but he was back chasing news.

People who worked with Mr. Myler at The Post found him affable and able to inject a friendly touch into a newsroom overseen for more than a decade by Col Allan, who was notorious for his outbursts and incivility.

The chance to run The News of the World, England’s biggest-circulation paper, drew Mr. Myler back to Europe, only to leave him four years later without a newspaper to call home. The evening the paper printed its final edition, he addressed the staff with a self-deprecating toast. “In a career that has not been too bad, I’ve managed to take most papers down in circulation,” he said. “I’ve never managed to close one.”

For three months, he did not work. Then Mr. Zuckerman invited him back into New York’s tabloid caldron, this time with the opposition.