And what it depends on, of course, is whether the story itself is worth the ethical compromise it requires and whether the competition is onto the story.

As electronic journalism came to be evaluated for its cost effectiveness, the network world began breaking up.

For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance.

The networks found themselves having to compete for an increasingly Balkanized audience.

In exchange for power, influence, command and a place in history, a president gives up the bulk of his privacy.

But the time has come for journalists to acknowledge that a zone of privacy does exist.

Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics.