QUITE how I've lasted this long without sounding off is anyone's guess. I'm hacked off with hacking.

Like most journalists, I haven't been getting my stories by tapping into peoples' private lives but the actions of News International - and now, it's being alleged, The Mirror too - hasn't stopped the blogging world for calling for the newspaper industry to have a long, hard look at itself in, ahem, the mirror.

Of course I'm not going to try and defend anything that's clearly illegal or an unecessary intrusion of privacy that's not in the public interest, but what really winds me up is the holier-than-thou attitude bloggers commenting on traditional newspapers seem all to happy to take.

Certainly, a story that appeared on a poorly-edited community news blog earlier this week knocking one of The Champion's page leads was priceless. I know I'm biased on this one, but the trained journalists at a regional paper read by 140,000 people were accused of "churnalism" by a website which copies and pastes press releases word for word.

As a "news" - and I use the term loosely - piece it highlighted exactly why I think bloggers and the traditional media are on a completely uneven playing field. Whereas I, or indeed any other journalist I can think of, would be taken to task by the subs, the editor and our readers if we even dreamed of mindlessly copying and pasting a press release without any further investigation, the bloggers don't need to worry because they're not bound by the same rules as the printed press.

Like most people in the media in 2011, I fully appreciate that blogs and social networking are here to stay; if you're reading these words, you'll know it's a world I'm embracing in the hope that, in a tough climate for the media, it might make a difference.

I also agree with the sentiment that Britain's as a whole does need looking at, although I'm not sure the current climate of phone hacking public outrage is the right climate to conduct, a cool, clear and impartial review. There are lessons to be learned, but Britain would be a poorer place if it meant cutting back the hard-earned freedoms of all the journalists who didn't break the law.

Surely what we need is a media which is tougher on lawbreakers and more tightly-regulated, but more importantly fairer, with laws that establish what properly accountable journalists can do and what people pretending to be journalists, hiding behind the Internet, can't.

Come to think of it, if we are going to replace the Press Complaints Commission we should move towards a wider Journalism Commission with a far wider-ranging code of conduct, which covers not only newspapers, but all journalism and anyone purporting to do journalistic work. It wouldn't just be a body with the remit to investigate wrongdoings, but a mark of quality and excellence anyone serious about journalism, newspaper reporters, broadcasters and bloggers alike, could sign up to as a sign they abide they ethical, fair and impartial reporting.

Roger that?

At a time when confidence in journalism is at an all-time low, a mark of quality which gives all journalists - no matter who they work for - the same set of guiding rules on ethics and conduct has got to be a good thing. It would give genuine bloggers and online journalists a deserved boost to their credibility, bolster a print and broadcast media in already troubled times and show up the rest, for all their self-congratulatory fluff masquerading as news, for what they actually are.

Pretenders.

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