But one thing that has got my attention is the discussion about  the consequences of this episode for the proud and much-vaunted world of British journalism, and what the culture of the tabloid newsroom is really like.

On the one hand, I’ve been thinking that it’s a tad hypocritical for many of the people who regularly buy – and have bought for years – our national newspapers to suddenly decry tactics and apparent underhand techniques that, unless they’ve been living in a cave, they surely suspected went on all the while. The same goes for police and politicians. How else did you think they got those scoops, divine intervention? As Ray Liotta said with veiled menace in Goodfellas, “They knew what went on at that cab stand”.

Yet in the past 24 hours media commendators have been quick to point to an apparently maverick, cut-throat newsroom culture that took root in Wapping in the 1980s as the reason for such strongarm investigative journalistic tactics. Many have said it shouldn’t even be called journalism. Others have talked about the pressure journalists are under the deliver stories in an all-out war for higher circulation figures. Some apparently feel they can’t say no to requests for dirty tricks in order to generate stories because they fear they’ll lose their jobs. Some of this, to a degree, in my experience, rings true.

I by no means have inner chamber insight into the working of Wapping. But having trained as a journalist in the early 1990s, worked on a regional daily that competed with the nationals and been paid by nationals – most of the tabloids – to provide information and copy on a freelance basis, I have some experiences that may help people to understand the newsroom psyche. Here are 10 things I experienced in that time and have observed since:

1. The 1980s. I started my first paid newspaper editorial job in 1992, in the midst of a recession. Five days later I was offered voluntary redundancy, and politely declined. It was a brutal time, borne of the aftermath of Wapping disputes, unions being sidelined, a brave new world of colour (yes, colour!) newspapers with slicker production processes, and rabid competition for circulation and ad revenue. Combine that with the rise of 1980s ‘lunch is for wimps’ culture and recessionary job fears, and you had a recipe for an uncaring, dog-eat-dog newsroom mentality. You got in early, worked unti late, lied and cheated your way to break stories and lived in fear of being beaten to them by rivals. My employer was actually pretty responsible, fair and moralistic about how reporters were treated and demands were balanced. But many weren’t. And when the shit really hit the fan, it was a case of get in there with your tin hat on. I remember covering a plane crash in the early hours of the morning in winter, in a rainstorm, wearing a shirt and suit trousers, and being threatened at gunpoint. When I got back to file copy I was told off for putting my health and safety at risk, and asked to write the story within 15 minutes.

2. Competition. The newspaper’s editorial staff all want the front page lead to be theirs, every day if possible. They’re protective of what they’re working on. It’s the way to get ahead in your career, but it’s hardly teamplay. The good reporters would help each other out, but others wouldn’t.

3. Outside help. Staff reporters were implicity encouraged to try to extract information in the pursuit of stories by any and all legal means. Morals did come into it on a regional paper because it had a reputation to uphold in the local community. The tabloids would always push it further. But when it came to the real dirty stuff, news agencies were often a source of copy that staff couldn’t generate themselves. I remember one example of a young female news agency reporter having a breakdown after being pushed to knock continuously on the door of a bereaved family until she got a quote. She was practically assaulated in the process, and got nothing other than a dressing down from her boss for perceived failure. It was ugly.

4. Trampling on people. My newspaper didn’t sanction it. Others did. I once arrived at the scene of a teenage suicide (girl who had hanged herself from the bannister at home) to find a reporter for a national tabloid that shall remain nameless stealing rubbish bags from the back garden so they could be sifted for information and potential suicide notes. A queue of reporters were on the doorstep wanting interviews. This sort of thing was completely commonplace.

5. Trampling on journalists. While I learned more in a few years in journalism than I could have ever hoped to, got ahead very quickly (writing stories for the nationals at 20, head reporter at 21, night news editor at 22, still made the tea throughout) and wouldn’t change a thing, journalists were often put in personally compromising positions. I had already decided that PR was a better career for me (as had many hacks at the time) when I was asked to cover a story about a friend of mine killing himself. I asked to be kept out of it, but was told that as I knew the family I was the man for the job. The copy I wrote, as compassionate as I could make it, was dramatised before publication. It was a career low-point.

6. Surveillance. Nothing like the current allegations and previous revelations of course, but if a news reporter tells you that journalists didn’t and don’t listen to police scanners, they might not be being truthful. It got to the point where reporters would turn up at scenes before the police. What marvellous foresight.

7. Delusion. Working in this way, with this pressure and competition, and using techniques so get this close to information and incidents as they occured, it was perhaps inevitable that some journalists saw themselves as something of a frontline public service, and so had unwritten rights to know things, be places and talk to people in a way that the general public couldn’t. Legally, that’s not the case. But it didn’t stop it becoming a popular belief that ’they have to let us know, we’re the press’. 

8. Police relationships. Proceed with caution on this one. I won’t go into any of the current allegations, but suffice to say the relationship between police and the media, while often strained, was typically rooted in mutual understanding. They needed each other. Equally, most editors were perfectly happy to take the local police down a peg or two in their next story after one that trumpeted a bobby’s valour.

9. Identification. I was taught at journalism school that reporters are always under a moral duty to let potential interviewees know who they are and who they work for. Often, reporters went deliberately light on detail in order to avoid people clamming up. Or opaque when discussing how they intended to use the information. The same is often true today. It was seen as part and parcel of journalistic practice, and you risked getting fewer or no stories without it.

10. Bullying. Well, the workplace was very different back then, and I sometimes wonder how ‘the world owes me a living’ Gen Y types would fare in the world of 80s or 90s journalism. Was it bullying? Perhaps. Certainly it could be intimidating, rarely for the faint-hearted and ‘not for wimps’. Machismo to the fore. Most things, in the estimations of those I know working in journalism today and who worked in it in the past, stopped short of outright bullying. But other things were be borderline or, occasionally, classic bullying. For British journalists coming out of the 1980s hangover, caught into the ferocity of 90s media and yet to be hit by the rise of the internet, seeing colleagues in tears, strops or crisis meetings was a regular occurance.

From what I’ve seen and talk to journalists about since, some things have changed, but some remain the same. It will be intriguing to see how the News Of The World works to recover from this week’s headlines, and how the transparency expectations and two-way nature of digitising media may change the face of British journalism.

Oh, and we did care about the Press Complaints Commission. A matter that made the back page of UK Press Gazette because you’d pushed it too far was practiclly a badge of honour for young reporters.

It was important to be frank and transparent about it, I felt. Too many PR people think things about our industry or the work that we do but don’t have the balls to say so. I am not seeking any kind of plaudits for valour nor sounding off on an ego-centric crusade here. But if the PR business is going to mature commecially and capitalise on its accelerating potential, we have to stand up and be counted on matters like this.

An article in The Sunday Times last weekend by Dominic Lawson largely concurred with what I had to say about it, and in many ways went further. It’s behind the paywall so take a look if you’re a subscriber, but here are a few cheeky cuts: ..”Burson-Marsteller’s mistake was to use email to make its proposal to the journalist – which is quite funny, given that the story to be planted was about a lack of privacy on the internet..” and “I find this refreshing rather than deplorable”, and also “Adversarial conflict is at the heart of  any proper democracy”.

In responding to the comments I’ve received, publicly and privately, about my comments, some people seem to have misread or misunderstood what I wrote. I don’t want to get into a winding war of words on the topic as it’s a bit of a storm in a teacup, but here are 10 things that I either tried to make clear in the initial post, or I have made clear in subsequent comments. Comments welcome, but please read what’s below first or your view might be wonky:

1. Smearing is an integral part of PR. This means that smearing goes on, and is an established part of what PRs *may* choose to do. And it all depends what you mean by smearing, of course. It comes in many forms. Read on for more.

2. Keith Trivitt of the PRSA’s comment on the PR Week article that my comments were “unfortunate” is his view. Mine is that the comments were all justified and true. ‘Unfortunate’ is probably a euphemism for something stronger, like ‘bloody daft’. Each to their own. I did not and do not endorse smearing in the form of reputational vendettas, a point that I’ve made clear through numerous comments. It probably couldn’t be clearer if I had it in bold type on my arse. Nowhere in the initial post did I say that smearing was a good thing: the post made two principal comments, that smearing exists and that it comes in many shades, some of which are either unacceptable or poor practice (or both). I would have left a comment on the PR Week piece too but the registration process won’t let me to do so at the moment (nothing inferred there!)

3.  The truth is that PRs work on statements, comments, and all forms of content that seek to position clients clearly, aggressively and often cheekily versus the competition. We’re after editorial exposure, across social and conventional media, that both informs and entertains, in order to further clients’ reptuations (this is particularly the case in the UK, with its unique media appetites). We shouldn’t overstep the mark in doing so, but rough jostling is part and parcel of it.

4. “If bad things happen to the competition, you will often endeavour to ensure people find out. That’s business”. Yep. Not everyone wants to do so, but many do.

5.  Judgement about what is and what isn’t acceptable is largely common sense. In today’s digitised media world, your attempts to smear will invariably go public, be poured over and you will be left with egg on your face.

6. Smearing campaigns are not off-limits, but smearing comes in many forms. Just like anything negative that you might say about someone – it depends on what you say, and your intentions. Again, reputation vendettas are a no-no. Was the Facebook apparent incident a case in point? Who knows, we don’t know what the full brief or deliverables were. It looks that way, but the main faux pas was that misguided email.

7. Smearing is now transparent. You can’d hide the fact that you’ve done it if you get rumbled. So be prepared to jusify your actions (and, again, only take action that will be deemed appropriate and not backfire).

8. As media digitises and there’s more ‘conversation’ about these things, brands will have to talk about their competition more openly. No-one seems to disagree about that at least

9. PRs need to know where to draw the line (and agencies need to train all staff about that) 

10. PRs disagree over some things. Thank God. We need some healthy debate to help modernise and improve the commercial potency of this industry. Bring it on.

There are a few people in PR who wouldn’t share that view this week after Burson-Marsteller’s ‘outing’ as the agency behind a smear campaign, and Facebook’s rapid retrenchment, over work to undermine Google.

‘Smear campaign’ is a term most readily associated with politics. It might be dirty stuff, but one party having a blatant pop at another with information that makes its reputation wobble has long been seen as practically standard practice. How have all those stories about politicians found their way into the press – pure journalistic skill? No, it’s often deliberate work to spread bad information around and put the victim in the worst possible light.

What PRs need to admit, rather than getting all high and mighty about the Burston-Marsteller incident, is that smearing is an integral part of PR. You don’t work hard to further your clients’ reputations without looking at those of their competitors. You do work on statements, comments, and all forms of content that seek to position clients clearly, aggressively and often cheekily versus the competition. If bad things happen to the competition, you will often endeavour to ensure people find out. That’s business.

It’s a question of judgement, of knowing when not to go too far so that you look worse than your rival. Largely, that’s common sense. In today’s digitised media world, your attempts to smear will invariably go public, be poured over and you will be left with egg on your face.

B-M’s mistake was not taking on a brief to talk down a client’s rival on behalf of a client, it was doing it in an amateur and clumsy way without sufficient thought of how it would be unearthed and perceived. And FFS, the client was Facebook: of course it would get talked about on social media.

Smear campaigns aren’t off limits, they just can’t be hidden anymore. They’ve changed: it needs to be conversational. Smearing is now transparent.

Which reminds me, I must put a healthy dollop of strawberry jam on this toast and spread it around. Yum.

The wave of change sweeping through north Africa and the wave of feeling sweeping through the streets of (in particular) London have shone a spotlight, of sorts, on the involvement of big business and governments with questionable foreign regimes.

The fact that some organisations are or may be involved in things abroad that are morally questionable is hardly a revelation. But in an Evening Standard article this week, PR was taken to task over the work of some agencies to, it was claimed, massage the images of foreign governments or organisations, or undertake “reputation laundering”.

Let’s get a few things straight. In a literal sense, reputation laundering is exactly what PRs do. That’s our business, and it has a clear if much-changing role these days. Or should do. Laundering is not necessarily a dirty word (said he, wearing a fresh pair of Calvin Kleins today).

It depends what you’re laundering, and why.

Pointing the finger at Bell Pottinger, Grayling et al may throw up some interesting commercial questions for PR agencies about what work they are or are not prepared to take on, but these issues have always been present for PR firms. Just as they have for lawyers, accountants or any firms in which people represent the interests and the outputs of others.

So does the article show PR in a grubbier light? It may have tried, but it did not succeed. Some parts of PR have always been grubby, and it’s a question of whether each agency is prepared to tolerate that. Speed wouldn’t, and examines each questionable client proposition on a case-by-case basis. Last year we chose not to pitch for an organisation extolling the virtues of the fur trade, not just from a moral standpoint but because the vast majority of our staff said they wouldn’t work on the account.

What the rubbing our noses in grubbiness routine does show is clear need for PR to be better at explaining what it is, and what we do, rather than lurking in the shadows. Media digitisation and further transparency around how we plan to create influence, and to what end, will help that. That said, we will always have work to do that is well under the radar – that’s the nature of the beast.

Regardless though, PR agencies will always assess the merits of each piece of potentially questionable business on a case-by-case basis. Some agencies will take slightly grubby work on, others won’t. Where there’s muck, there’s brass, but the stakes may be too high in some cases.

It’s pointless to assess whether PR has suddenly become a dirty profession though. It hasn’t, and if anything the fact that there is more of a focus on what PR agencies actually do is a good thing for the industry.

Get real. Whatever the outcome of this one, journalists listen in to conversations they shouldn’t all the time. Whether eavesdropping rudely, being passed notes illicitly, tuning into police radio frequencies or scavenging through dustbins, journalists do dodgy things to get information. This is my first-hand experience.

The point is whether the NotW did anything illegal. The news coverage is now turning to this point, but only after a day of bluster about ethics. If you want to write about ethics, don’t shine the light on journalism, you won’t be telling the public anything it doesn’t already know.

My interest is in what happens if the police tear Wapping Towers apart looking for phone hack evidence and find all manner of dirt on big stories that are being stored for a rainy day.

So in case they do come out, here are two that may be lurking in a cupboard:
- Picture of minor celebrity in a compromising position with a domestic dog. Circa 1995/6 I believe
- A big trail of evidence implicating a former football manager in (alleged) international crime

You read it here first. Kind of, in a veiled and very obscure way. I do have the law to consider.