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When reporters spend time in jail in democratic countries with press freedom laws, it's usually been for refusing to reveal confidential sources.

The British scandal currently pummeling Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based media empire is something entirely different. Rather than defending the public's right to know, journalists allegedly broke laws, violated the privacy of people of both powerful and humble stations in life, and even threatened police officials to defuse investigations.

In pursuit of scoops, tabloid reporters of the News of the World and other Murdoch-owned publications are accused of bribing officers, impersonating public officials and hacking into thousands of mobile phones, all in illegal efforts to extract users' confidential information for stories. Targets allegedly included members of England's royal family, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, relatives of slain soldiers, celebrities and even a murdered teenage girl.

In an emotional speech to Parliament, Brown denounced what he claimed was illicitly gathered information that his infant son suffered from cystic fibrosis. He decried the journalistic tactics that victimized innocent men, women and children who found "their properly private lives, their private losses, their private sorrows, treated as the public property … bought and sold by News International for commercial gain."

The scandal has already resulted in the closing of News of the World and the derailing of Murdoch's $12 billion bid to take control of British Sky Broadcasting. Andy Coulson, a former editor of the paper and later chief spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron, has been arrested by police. The chief lawyer for Murdoch's British newspapers, Tom Crone, who approved the News of the World stories, has resigned. News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, another former editor of the News of the World, is facing demands to resign.

The scandal is even threatening to cross the Atlantic, with media reports that the hacking may also have been directed at phone records of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called on appropriate law enforcement agencies in the U.S. to investigate possible violations here. "I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans," said Rockefeller. "If they did, the consequences will be severe."

This is a very long way from the saga of All the President's Men, the uplifting account of how two dogged young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, with the backing of ethically responsible Washington Post management, broke the Watergate scandal in 1972 that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It inspired a generation of new journalists to their mission and exhibited the finest aspects of the profession.

Whereas Watergate showed what journalism at its best can accomplish, the British scandal does the exact opposite. It reveals the dangers when pursuit of scoops crosses the bounds of decency and legality, when reporters become data and identity thieves and their editors and owners are either unethical or incompetent, or both. It's a wake-up call warning us what journalism cannot be allowed to become.