A senior journalist wrote to The Times to say that the Chartered Institute of Journalists, founded by Royal Charter in 1890, had, in its charter, a rule that journalists must act ethically at all times. He thought that sufficient. That any journalist can think that demonstrates just how wilfully blind the profession can be.
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do, unbribed, there's no occasion to" wrote Humbert Wolfe in the early part of the C20. And as Kipling famously said to Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, soon after the latter had acquired the Daily Express in 1916, Aitken's press wanted "Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". Both statements remain true.