David Cameron's spin doctor

AND so it goes on. Still more witnesses are popping out of the tabloid woodwork to say it is inconceivable that Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World who is now David Cameron's top press adviser, did not know that illegal hacking into mobile telephone messages was endemic in his newsroom. Listen to Tory loyalists and they will tell you that this is a nakedly partisan smear campaign by Labour politicians and their sympathisers in the press, who (a) want a government scalp and (b) hate Mr Coulson's ex-proprietor Rupert Murdoch.

I am sure a lot of this is about partisan politics: it is, after all, the job of the opposition to oppose. I am also sure that a lot of journalists at the papers leading with this story, the Guardian and the Independent, think that Mr Murdoch wields too much power in the political life of this country. But I think political types are failing to understand the psychology that underpins this latest revival of what is now a three year old story.

For quite a lot of journalists with experience of a daily newsroom, the defence mounted by Mr Coulson—that illegal phone hacking was the work of a single rogue reporter, the royal editor Clive Goodman, who concealed his actions from his editors—is a bit implausible. And if there is one thing that drives reporters into a terrier-like frenzy (ok, along with the prospect of food and drink on expenses) it is the belief that someone is being less than frank with them, especially in a manner that they feel insults their intelligence. For Conservatives who see Mr Coulson as a valuable member of their leadership's inner circle, the fact that the press keeps returning to this story again and again is evidence of the shallow, shrill partisan nature of the British media. I am not sure it feels like that from the point of view of the press.

I think that ever since Mr Coulson resigned as editor in 2007, saying he took responsibility for the actions that took place on his watch but insisting that he knew nothing about them, lots of journalists—rightly or wrongly—assumed that they were witnessing a cover-up. When executives from the paper's parent company, News International, told the House of Commons media select committee that a full internal enquiry had convinced them that Mr Goodman acted alone, that just fuelled their outrage. Each new detail that has emerged about the failure of the police to interview anyone from the News of the World other than Mr Goodman (who later went to jail for his actions) was fat on the fire.

Now, this is a blog posting, not a news article. I have no way of knowing what high-ups at the News of the World did or did not know about phone hacking. It is interesting that the latest witness to speak to the Guardian, a former deputy features editor at the tabloid, alleges this morning that listening to the voicemails of celebrities was so widespread that Mr Coulson "would have known that reporters were doing it", but says that individual reporters would not bother to tell bosses each time they had listened in on voicemails. It is also interesting that unnamed former staff allege that the paper knew the risks attached to hacking voicemails, so that, as one claims:

"The News of the World are always very very careful not to use anything that was taped from a phone. We could use it as raw information. You listen to their phone, you know they're going to meet a lover at such a place and such a time, and you're there with a photographer."

Another ex-tabloid hack who declined to give his name (perhaps the least inspiring form of witness imaginable, it must be said) tells the Guardian that it was a regular joke in daily news conferences to keep information about dodgy practices from editors like Mr Coulson, answering questions with "nudge, nudge" or "say no more".

So far, then, no smoking gun. So why are journalists so incredulous? Part of it is the rather startling logic underpinning Mr Coulson's defence. He is, in essence, saying that when he edited the most hard-driving tabloid newspaper in Britain he did not know the true origin of stories brought to him by senior staff. In the acidic summary of Chris Huhne, speaking in 2009 as an opposition Liberal Democrat MP (he is now a coalition cabinet minister), Mr Coulson: "at best, was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and, at worst, was personally implicated in criminal activity."

Most of it is gut instinct. As a baby reporter, nearly 20 years ago, I worked for a few years for a tabloid newspaper, the London Evening Standard. It was, admittedly a pretty staid tabloid: a commuter paper that boasted of being read by both bosses and secretaries, with posh arts and books sections, lots of straightforward breaking news, fluffy features and lots and lots of articles about house prices. But in those days it was owned by and shared a building with a proper, scary tabloid, the Daily Mail, and the newsroom was reasonably rough and tumble. Two things that dominated life at the Standard make me a bit puzzled by the Coulson defence: one is libel, the other is internal gossip.

It is hard to describe how libel dominates bosses' minds at a British daily newspaper. British libel laws are both ferocious and stacked in favour of plaintiffs: compared to America, for example, it is exceedingly hard to mount a public interest or fair comment defence, and newspapers often find themselves having to prove that plaintiffs are wrong, rather than the other way round. As a result, any story that could conceivably be seen as defamatory (and that was almost any story about some highly litigious celebrities or politicians), triggered endless discussions between editors, in-house lawyers and the reporters working on them. Tough stories could not be published simply because witnesses had told a reporter they were true: the reporter had to convince his editors and the lawyers that the sources would be willing to stand up in court and repeat their claims on oath. That meant that editors obsessed about the precise origins of stories. On a newspaper like the News of the World that lives or dies by sensational scoops and is endlessly defending libel actions, the precise origins of a story are not just a question of professional curiosity for editors. Knowing where a story comes from is a matter of survival.

Nor should outsiders underestimate the importance of gossip to a daily or Sunday newsroom, preferably gossip that is scurrilous or funny, or both. Fleet Street seethes, constantly, with unprovable rumours about well-known people and unprintable stories: it is integral to the self-respecting hack's identity to be able to pass on the latest titbits. I have never set foot in the News of the World. But if it is true that voicemails were being hacked frequently, I struggle to believe that reporters did not share comic or eye-watering bits of gossip that they picked up from phone messages. Which means that everyone must have known about the hacked voicemails. To believe otherwise would be like believing that junior doctors did not share gossip about the man in casualty with comically lewd injuries or some immensely fat patient who had just broken a trolley.

Even unusably smutty photographs are a treasured currency in tabloid newsrooms. Picture desks at different titles constantly exchange snatched paparazzi shots of famous people with no clothes on, having sex outdoors and so on, none of which will see the light of day. Showing off such pictures is one of the social aces that picture editors routinely play at morning news conference, even on the more staid publications.

For a few months, I attended morning conference at the Standard, in a very junior role. The newspaper's then editor was a decent but slightly comic figure who liked to think of himself as one of the lads, striding about in his braces and noisily exchanging gossip with reporters. But compared to the scrawny, chain-smoking veterans on his newsdesk he was in truth remarkably prim. I remember his arrival in conference one morning. All the section editors were bunched around the man from pictures, who was showing them a photograph of a British actress. "Oh, come now, come now, what have you got?" chortled the editor. "Picture of XXX, taken on her hotel balcony at Cannes," said the man from pictures, a taciturn type. "Oh, oh, oh, and what is so interesting, come on, do say," said the editor, chuckling more than ever. The man from pictures barely looked up, replying with withering finality: "You can see her muff."

Blushing deeply, the editor moved swiftly to the daily news list.