The relationship between press and politician - protected by the Constitution and designed to be happily adversarial - becomes sour, raw and confrontational.

Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of.

The written tone and the spoken tone change and the reporters' disbelief in the veracity of the government spreads to the readers and the viewers.

The ethics of editorial judgement, however, began to go though a sea change during the late 1970s and 80s when the Carter and Reagan Administrations de-regulated the television industry.

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.

Most journalists now believe that a person's privacy zone gets smaller and smaller as the person becomes more and more powerful.

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