And a lot of people go to journalism school, become good journalists, and have long careers. There are far more applicants in the field than there are jobs, so there’s not a lot of room for failed fiction writers. You can cherry-pick examples of course, but that doesn’t mean the majority.

The Murdoch scandal isn’t typical, and you should see what reputable journalists are saying about Murdoch on Twitter. I’ve always regarded Murdoch as yellow journalism, and I’ve been called all sorts of nasty things because of it. (By non-jounalists. Always.) The late, great Mike Royko said way back in 1984 that Rupert Murdoch newspapers aren’t even suitable for wrapping up fish (he put it more eloquently than that) and he refused to work for Murdoch. That was 27 years ago. This has been a very long time coming. The Rupert Murdoch problem isn’t a problem with journalism, it’s a problem with Rupert Murdoch.

It should be noted that a lot of other writers felt the same way and followed Royko out the door. Murdoch’s then-new purchase quickly sank and he got out of the Chicago market. All because a few journalists took a stand against an unprincipled owner.

There are a lot of bad dentists out there too, but that doesn’t mean all dentists are bad. When you find a drill-happy quack, you tell him to get lost and find another one. The same goes for journalists.

And I’m pretty sure you’ll find that posing as a lawyer is illegal. Every state requires a lawyer to pass a bar exam to practice. You need that license to practice. Without that paper, you are in violation of any state’s laws. If you send a letter, email, or call someone and misrepresent yourself as a lawyer, and they respond to you, conduct business with you or pay you based on that representation you would be breaking the law. Even if all you are doing is trying to impress chicks. That particular case might be hard to get a charge to stick. I can’t imagine any DA spending much effort with it. But egads, it is cheesy! BTW IANAL, nor do I play one on TV.

Unfortunately, as you alluded to, “ethics don’t pay the bills.” One only has to look at the supermarket tabloids or TMZ to realize that, to quote Shakespeare, “ye who snoozes, loses.” (Er, uh, something like that …) I’m sure in that rat race, you can “ethic” your way to the poor house pretty quickly. Those tabloids don’t care about ethics. All they know is that pictures of Jennifer Aniston sunbathing nude in a foreign company can bring a few hundred bucks. The better the zoom lens, the better the shot.

I guess the only gray area I would consider would be “legal hacking” — using techniques more invasive than traditional journalism, but not illegal. Things like social engineering or “Google hacking” could fall under this umbrella. Is it ethical to call a defendant’s mother and pretend to be his/her attorney in order to gather information? It’s not illegal, but it’s not particularly ethical either.