Radio review: News from Nowhere: How the Papers Got Their Stories

In a late change to the schedules, News from Nowhere: How the Papers Got Their Stories (Radio 4) shunted Costing the Earth on to the iPlayer yesterday lunchtime. Jon Manel's report about murky strategies used by journalists to source stories went beyond current concerns about phone-hacking to look at other material supplied to newspapers by private detectives, scammers, hackers, blaggers and tipsters. It contained disturbing material. At the heart of the programme was a secretly recorded interview with a former blagger who supplied information, she said, to all but one tabloid newspaper. She claimed, Manel noted, to be "the best in the business at obtaining details about people's health records". She casually spoke about how easy it is to talk those with medical information into revealing it – a consultant's secretary, for example. "They just start telling you things," she said. "They're actually quite pleased to tell you things sometimes." All you have to do, she suggested, is to act confidently. Manel also had seen notes from a private investigator who had supplied information to 36 journalists, much of it concerning people not in the public eye but maybe related to someone who is. He read the details to some of them, and you could hear them reeling. "It's like having a camera put in your loo," said one. "Why? Why?"