Tom Tomorrow asks how Fox Noise can be chided for breaching news ethics when it isn't in the news business

Scandal? What scandal?

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

"No one at this network would ever hack into someone's voicemail in pursuit of a news story . . . because we're not a news organization! I mean, seriously -- have you ever watched this channel?"

by Ken

It remains to be seen whether the News Corp people will seize on this obvious strategy to defend their, er, honor. Oh, it won't insulate them from any incidental law-breaking that's become part of the fabric of their "news"-gathering, but it will put an end to all the yammering about their shoddy journalistic ethics and culture of corruption and suchlike.

Of course it's true, though. In much the same way that Republicans -- and for that matter more and more Democrats -- facing aspersions regarding their ethical standards ought to be presenting the obvious defense: what ethical standards? How can you be guilty of ethical lapses if you have no ethics? And each house of Congress, after all, has its very own committee to vouch for the ethics of its outstandingly upstanding members.

If the government decides to raise some cash by going into the naming-opportunity game, high on the list should be a Tom DeLay Memorial Ethics Lobby.

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