Donald Trelford in The Independent ponders on the rights and wrongs of the two Telegraph hackettes who visited LibDem MPs undercover in search of fodder to keep their editors happy over Christmas.
The Telegraph is confident that it can pass the public interest test. If Lib Dem MPs were saying one thing in public about their coalition partners and something else in private, then it can be argued that voters were entitled to know this. Likewise with Cable: if he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch's media empire, then it was clearly inappropriate for him to have a quasi-judicial role in weighing the rights and wrongs of a BSkyB business deal.
I'm afraid the Telegraph exercise looks more like a fishing expedition than a rigorous investigation of wrong-doing, in the public interest. It's the spread that clinches it for me - the range of people questioned, the range of questions asked, and the range of answers used. And, as Donald says, fishing expeditions are banned by the Press Council's code of conduct.
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