Last week the News of the World’s deep-set closets were trawled for their skeletons, which unsurprisingly contained the underhand equivalents of a sequined mankini and an “I’m with Stupid” T-shirt.

Like TOWIE, the equally acronymed-for-convenience NOTW isn’t known for it’s subtlety. Not content with Benny Hill-style peeping tom tactics to get their scoops, journalists were supposedly encouraged to hack into the digital realm, infiltrating the phones of deceased children and grieving soldiers’ families, which is low even for them.

Step by step, painstaking moment by painstaking moment, reports covered the progress of the paper’s demise, alongside each creaking movement of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the Cyril Sneer of current affairs. 

The stories were not only confusing, since every Prime Minister and their lapdog became embroiled, but pretty tedious too – although, personally, this is because my attention span dwindles if a news story doesn’t involve an animal on a Segway.

However, two key points blazed through the drudgery. 

Firstly, almost outshining the scandal was a photograph emerging of Murdoch wearing a minuscule pair of short shorts, thus revealing far too much of his hairy bread-stick legs. Secondly, the crooked tactics of a handful of brown-nose journalists had worked to undermine readers’ confidence in legitimate news seekers everywhere. 

It did have me wondering about the lengths that some reporters will go to get their news inches and editors’ approval; since the florid affairs surfaced, several journalists have decided to speak out against their former employers.

Former tabloid journalist David LaFontaine told CNN that in the past he has dangled in a hot air balloon over Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, posed as a doctor, infiltrated religious sects and became a neo-Nazi for a week, like a chubby, shape-shifting James Bond. Of course he was never asked outright to partake in such activities, but a wink, a nudge and a redundancy form thrust in the kisser were quite persuasive tools.

The ethics that come alongside posing as someone else is sticky moral territory – you’ll know this if you’ve had the pleasure of watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Yet, this moral debacle highlights the chasm between those who admirably pursue a story and those whose decency is akin to Ryan Giggs’.

There are those who place themselves in very real danger, such as war correspondents risking their lives daily in order to get the facts straight. Take, for example, the BBC reporters who were captured and tortured in Libya this year, or Russia’s Centre for Extreme Journalists – a group recognising the danger of chronicling the truth.

Hopefully, this outspoken tabloid pandemonium will have editors thinking twice when it comes to acquiring the salacious stuff, and not just pass their immoral practices off as supply and demand.

As you might expect, I’d be happy with a pig in a wet suit.

More Nicola:

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