Implausible deniability

It is known that, amongst the unwashed of Grub Street, there are still those who complain how there is little practical difference between the unrestrained phone-hacking regime which prevailed at NoW and some of the low-tech info-gathering antics which existed back in the day.

Many confess in their cups (very loudly) to paying cleaners for the contents of waste paper baskets taken from the town clerk’s office or inveigling information out of government departments. It is claimed that one Daily Mail hack maintained a long-term and mutually lucrative relationship with the firm who held the cleaning & valeting contract for ministerial cars.

“We all did it - and we all know it went on”, goes the chorus line.

As such, the contrived defence mounted on behalf of Andy Coulson by Derek Jameson on the very excellent Gentleman Ranters blogsite seems flimsy at best.

Jameson, himself a former NoW editor, claims the overriding and accepted principle in operation in a newsroom is “Better you don’t ask”. Journalists would insist on their sources and methods being undeclared and this was ‘accepted’ practice. The idea however that a newspaper can be consistently operated on the basis of what an editor doesn’t know can’t hurt him, her or the paper, whilst undeniably attractive, is clearly an unsustainable one. Jameson’s own court experiences presumably tell him the same.

Leaks, honey traps, door-stepping and off-the-record briefings remain the lifeblood of journalism. Given the blurred nature of dividing lines between politics, sport and showbiz, it is inevitable that methods of obtaining information will similarly overlap. As such, the industry is likely to continue to put as much effort into stretching the envelope as in steaming it open - Max Mosley notwithstanding, of course.

Therefore the accepted wisdom shared by hard-nosed journos who earn their livings by looking into other people’s rubbish bins is that Coulson’s big mistake was not getting implicated in phone-hacking or being found out – but actually thinking that he could go legit afterwards.