Given Nick Dav­ies’ story alleging mass mobile phone-hacking by journ­al­ists, it might per­haps be instruct­ive to look back at the journ­al­istic mor­als of another age.

Here, by way of example, is ‘Journ­al­ism and Mor­al­ity’ by Silas Bent, pub­lished in 1926 in The Atlantic (and quoted in Can You Trust The Media?). Note espe­cially — towards the end — the atti­tude of management…

For the hun­dredth time, sav­agely, I rang that door­bell. It was not my first visit, by any means, although there was no hope that the mis­tress of the house­hold could be seen, for she had eloped sev­eral days before with a mil­lion­aire man­u­fac­turer of cos­met­ics; and as for her hus­band, he was under restraint in a private san­at­orium. There was a grown daugh­ter who was sup­posed to be in her mother’s con­fid­ence, and I hoped to worm out of her the secret of the lov­ers’ where­abouts. The news­pa­per I was work­ing for was get­ting uneasy. It had prin­ted the scan­dal with gusto but without pro­voca­tion. There had been no court action, no street encounter between the two men; the mil­lion­aire had not even been expelled from his clubs. There was no legal priv­ilege of pub­lic­a­tion. And as time wore on, the other news­pa­pers not dar­ing in the cir­cum­stances to say any­thing about the case, there had come to the office an acute feel­ing that unless the run­aways were found there might be short shrift in a libel suit.

As I turned away from the door a tele­graph mes­sen­ger boy was wear­ily mount­ing the steps.

‘There’s nobody home,’ I told him curtly, ‘not even a servant.’

‘You can sign for this, can’t you?’ he asked. ‘Friend of the family.’

On the open book he held out for my sig­na­ture was a tele­gram addressed to the daugh­ter of the house. It must surely be from her mother. I set down an assumed name, pock­eted the mes­sage, and waited until the boy was out of sight.

It was even­ing and I was work­ing for an after­noon news­pa­per, so I took my booty home. There, with a bor­rowed and heated hat­pin, I opened the telegram—not very expertly, for I tore the flap. The mes­sage was dated from Tuc­son, and was an inquiry from the wife about the con­di­tion of the deser­ted hus­band. I had found the runaways.

The anxi­ety behind this tele­gram did not at all con­cern me, nor was I con­cerned at hav­ing stolen it. As the child of God-fearing par­ents I think I may say I had a strict sense of private prop­erty rights: I would not have pilfered ten cents or ten dol­lars. But my con­science was wholly untroubled about the mes­sage, because I had done the con­ven­tional thing. I was liv­ing up to the stand­ards of my fel­lows. Other report­ers would have done as I did, con­fid­ent of the approval of their super­i­ors; and this was true of nearly all met­ro­pol­itan news­pa­pers twenty years ago, not merely of those which were denom­in­ated yel­low. We used to hear of some that did not join in such prac­tices, but they were notori­ously stodgy, and suffered cor­res­pond­ingly in rev­enue. A com­par­ison of the cir­cu­la­tion and advert­ising stat­ist­ics of the Boston Tran­script as against the New York World, of the New York Even­ing Post of that day as against the Chicago Tribune, will illus­trate my point.

News­pa­pers that were suc­cess­ful fin­an­cially went after news aggress­ively, and on occa­sion made news, as my paper had done in the case of this illi­cit elopement.

I was exult­ant, not ashamed; and it was with repressed tri­umph that I laid the tele­gram on the city editor’s desk the next morn­ing, explain­ing in detail how I had come by it.

He heard me unmoved, gaz­ing out over the ‘local room.’ Then he said hast­ily that he must go into the edit­or­ial con­fer­ence, a daily form­al­ity, and would see me when he returned. He took the tele­gram with him. This impressed me as rather odd beha­viour, but what happened when he came back was really trying.

‘You are aware,’ he said severely, ‘that you have com­mit­ted a felony?’

I nod­ded. I was begin­ning to get angry.

‘This news­pa­per can­not coun­ten­ance such con­duct,’ he con­tin­ued, ‘and will make no use whatever of inform­a­tion obtained in that way. If I did not real­ize that you acted from overzeal I should be com­pelled to dis­charge you. As it is, you will be per­mit­ted to remain on the staff, on pro­ba­tion. Now, what are you going to do with this tele­gram?’ His grav­ity relaxed; his man­ner implied a ban­ter­ing reproach. ‘Rough work,’ he said. ‘The flap’s torn.’

‘I’ll paste it up,’ I replied sul­lenly, ‘and stick it under the door.’

‘Don’t do that,’ he advised. ‘Sup­pose we wait.’

I returned to my desk, and presently the Sunday editor, with a curi­ous smile, handed me a receiv­ing tele­graph envel­ope, prop­erly addressed. As he turned word­lessly away the city editor beckoned me, slipped the mes­sage into the fresh envel­ope, sealed it, and dir­ec­ted me, instead of return­ing it in per­son, to employ someone I could trust, and have him tele­phone me when the task was safely accom­plished. The mes­sage was slow in com­ing. Once, when I emerged from a tele­phone booth after answer­ing a per­sonal call, the city editor summoned me impa­tiently. He leaned for­ward and whispered with the air of a con­spir­ator: ‘Have you removed the corpse from the premises?’

Although I was in a state of high moral indig­na­tion at the man­ner which my law­break­ing was being accep­ted, I was some­what mol­li­fied at this tacit indic­a­tion of fel­low respons­ib­il­ity. After all, the city editor was a good scout. Presently I learned that the tele­gram had been put under the right door, and that my mes­sen­ger, after ringing the bell, had escaped without being ques­tioned, and I so repor­ted. I was made to feel, some­how, that I was in quite good odour at the office.