IN 1988, while attending a conference of News Corporation editors in Aspen, Colorado, I made the mistake of raising the thorny issue of journalistic ethics. The proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, was not amused.

In short order, Murdoch, who was hosting the session, turned red, then purple, as I repeatedly asked a senior executive from his London paper The Sun whether the publication had any ethical framework. It didn't, the paper's news editor finally admitted. In most media companies that admission might have earned the executive a rebuke. But instead, I copped it, with Murdoch later dismissing me as a ''Fairfax wanker''. (For the record, I wasn't at that point; I became one 12 months later.)

I have reflected on the episode many times since, particularly this week as the News of the World phone hacking scandal went from bad to worse and then putrid.

I left that conference in Colorado more than 20 years ago concerned that Murdoch saw ethics or, at least, the discussion of them, as an inconvenience that got in the way of the newspaper business. If that really is the case, should we be entirely surprised that the phone hacking scandal played out at one of his titles and that it ended in its forced closure?

I can't recall a bigger journalistic disgrace. Stephen Glass from The New Republic and Jayson Blair of The New York Times brought shame to their publications by inventing sources and quotes. The Hitler Diaries, by a couple of forgers, were the work of individuals. The NOTW scandal appears systemic and endemic.