Holman W. Jenkins: A British Watergate?

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. is a journalist, editorial writer and member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

Sometime between the Johnson and Nixon administrations the rules on dirty tricks, secret taping and suitcases full of cash changed. It wasn't entirely "fair," in some sense, but who doubts American politics is cleaner and less tolerant of shenanigans than it used to be?

This process is occurring in Britain on media behavior. The Milly Dowler revelations played a role—the allegations that News of the World reporters had hacked into the voicemail of a missing girl later discovered to have been murdered. But it also seems relevant that the dam broke when a new party arrived in power after a long period of ascendancy by its rival. Easy to exaggerate is how much the bursting is really due to new info. Three names to keep in mind are Jonathan Rees, Steve Whittamore and Glenn Mulcaire, all private investigators long accused of having made a living selling illegally obtained information to the press.

Rees was the subject of a 1999 police investigation, described in a detailed 2002 Guardian newspaper report. An official police summary was quoted as saying the Rees network of informants' "thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media."

Whittamore's files were seized in a 2003 raid by Britain's Information Commissioner, becoming the basis for his 2006 report on "The Unlawful Trade in Confidential Personal Information." So undeafening was the response, the commissioner followed up six months later by releasing a list of 31 publications "positively identified" as trafficking with Whittamore. Top of the list, 58 reporters or editors of the Daily Mail ordered up 952 information requests. News of the World, the now-closed tabloid owned by the Journal's parent, was fifth on the roster, with 19 employees in 152 transactions.

Finally, Mulcaire...