Journalism could be nasty. Let's not let the unpleasentness of the phone hacking drama blind you. The 4th Estate is essential to our democracy, because it uncovers the information our decision makers would rather stay hidden. The information we need to ensure they are doing their jobs. To uncover this information sometimes our journalists need to engage in some blatantly illegal or immoral things. Fact!

The real tragedy of drama that has lead to the the Leveson Inquiry is that it has become a celebrity parade (says the girl who was geeking out over Nick Davis's testimony). The phone hacking wasn't the worse thing to have happened. The real crime is that journalists were abusing the cover of the 4th estate to find out who Hugh Grant was sleeping with. Now that's rubbish!

If you're going to break the low, and use the fact that your are a journalist as your excuse, I'd rather you be uncovering money laundering at some Fortune 500, or how charities really spend your money. Something like that. Everything the public is interested in isn't always in their interest.

As for the celebrities, we know that they are fake; turns out when the media's detective work turns up nothing, they write fiction as news. Their punishment would be the loss of publicity, and perhaps then we'll get our journalist back.