One reason that it is wise not to trust the ethical instincts of the media is that news organizations so frequently demonstrate entrenched dishonesty and stunning ethics ignorance. A recent example, thoroughly explored in the promising new blog, "Investigate the Media," is the San Francisco Chronicle use of technology to actively deceive visitors to its web site, www.SFGate.com.

The paper was tired, apparently, of hearing complaints from readers whose comments to stories on the website had been deleted by the Chronicle. Foiled commenters frequently claimed the reasons for deletion were based on ideology rather than inappropriate style or content. So it installed clever software that made it appear that a deleted comment was still on the site when the author of the comment viewed it from his or her own computer. To everyone else, however, the banned comment didn't appear.

Miracle of technology! What a clever solution! No complaints from annoying correspondents who were too nasty or too profane (or perhaps too conservative or liberal?) for the site moderator's tastes! No repeat attempts to comment on the issue involved, either, since they will think their comments are visible to all!

The system is, however, absolutely, unquestionably and obviously unethical, as well as cowardly. How strange that this wouldn't occur to a news organization, whose sacred trust is the conveyance of truth to the public. The San Francisco Chronicle is intentionally deceiving readers for its own convenience, yet it wants those same readers to rely on what it prints in its pages. That's the real miracle.

Any news organization that wouldn't recoil at the mere suggestion of employing such a system has a serious ethics deficit. It is almost a shame that the Chronicle's trick was exposed before other papers were tempted to follow its example. We would have had a new and useful way to identify the arrogant and dishonest institutions that masquerade as public truth-tellers.