Our media are in a mess. They seem to be lost in a fog of ethical confusion that has caused them to commit some egregious breaches lately.

This began some time ago with columnist Daryl Bristow-Bovey's plagiarism when he pinched some passages from a book by humourist Bill Bryson. Plagiarism is the worst ethical offence a writer can commit.

Yet Bristow-Bovey was brazen in his self-justification, and many letter-writers, including some close to the media, defended him on the grounds that he had only stolen little bits, and that his column was very clever and witty and would be missed if newspapers dropped it.

What nonsense. My client pleads not guilty to the charge of theft, your honour, on the grounds that he is very amusing and people will miss him if he is punished.

Then we had Ranjeni Munusamy, who wrote the original story that led to the Hefer Commission's investigation into whether the Director of National Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, was an apartheid spy, complaining that her fellow journalists had turned on her for refusing to disclose her sources.

This is a classic example of an elliptical response such as politicians make when they deny something of which they have not been accused. It enabled Munusamy to purport to be taking a stand on a matter of journalistic principle.

The point is, fellow journalists did not accuse her of that. No self-respecting journalist would expect another to disclose the identity of a source that has spoken on condition of confidentiality. If you give your word on that, you are ethically bound to stand by it - even on pain of imprisonment.

Where Munusamy erred was in defying her editor's judgment that her story was not sufficiently watertight to justify publication, and sending it to another newspaper to be published.

Editing a newspaper is a tough job. This is where the buck stops with all the difficult decisions on legal, ethical and other major issues that have to be made. The editor has to take responsibility. That is what the job is about, and an editor is chosen because the board of directors considers that he or she is the best qualified person to exercise that kind of decision-making responsibility.

A good editor should, of course, discuss the issues involved with the reporter and other senior members of staff. Issues such as the level of public interest weighed against the damage publication will cause to the person accused, the degree of certainty about accuracy, the credibility of sources, the degree of corroboration between sources, their possible motives for providing the information, and so on.

It appears Munusamy's editor, Mathatha Tsedu, did that and decided that the story should not be published. It was a wise decision.

But Munusamy disagreed with the decision and sent the story to another newspaper because, she says, she considered its publication to be "in the public interest".

In my book, it was a firing offence. If Munusamy was intent on publishing her story, her proper course would have been to resign from the newspaper that employed her, then as a freelance journalist try to sell her story elsewhere. She did not do that. She gave the story to City Press while still employed in a senior capacity by the Sunday Times.

As for disclosing sources, Judge Joos Hefer made it clear that if Munusamy testified before the commission she could object to such questions. This was the first time any judge or commissioner has offered such a right, which was a major gain on a matter journalists have struggled for years to establish.

A pity, therefore, that Munusamy took the issue on appeal with an argument that journalists should not be compelled to testify at all. Not surprisingly she lost, and with that Hefer's landmark offer went down the drain. It would not actually have made case law, but it would have set a precedent that journalists would have been able to cite in future legal arguments.

As for former City Press editor Vusi Mona, not only did he show defective judgment in publishing Munusamy's story, and then under a defective headline, but still more egregiously he violated the terms of a confidential background briefing that Ngcuka gave to editors and other senior journalists by revealing what he had said and then testifying about it.

Mona has claimed he did this because he did not regard the confidentiality of the briefing as "absolute", and felt it was overridden by his impression that Ngcuka was engaging in "character assassination".

Pardon me, Mr Mona, but if you value the ethics of journalism then you are bound, absolutely, by the terms of a confidential briefing that you choose to attend. If you don't want to be bound, then don't attend.

Deciding to violate the terms after attending because you don't like what you heard is not only dishonest but undermines the whole basis of such briefings, which are important in ensuring that journalists have a good understanding of the background to unfolding events so that they can report on them more knowledgeably and contextually.

This is vital for quality reporting, and is in the interests of both the media and the institutions giving the briefings - and not least the public, which will be better informed as a result.

But if officials fear that the confidentiality of the briefings may not be respected, that journalists may decide arbitrarily to override the rules, then the briefings will simply dry up and a valuable interface in communication between public bodies and the public will be lost.

Journalists and publishers must take stock of the flurry of errors that have occurred and make sure there is a clearer understanding of the ethical codes of journalism as these have evolved over many years. It is time to clean up our act.

Sparks is a veteran journalist and political commentator.

With acknowledgements to Allister Sparks and the Cape Times.