"The public appetite for celebrity fluff is voracious. Its limits are far past the horizon of good sense.
"The people want to hear about unsubstantiated Paris Hilton rumors and see pictures of Brad Pitt's vacation, damn it, and we don't care how you get them. Stern's actions were egregious and pretty stupid, to boot.
"But further revelations that Page Six editor Richard Johnson accepted the use of a private jet, private car and private bachelor party from those he covered highlighted the fact that gossip writers play by their own rules."
The magazine went on to ask Lloyd Grove, who writes a gossip column in the New York Daily News -- the Post's tabloid rival -- whether the people who work his side of the street ought to be governed by the same ethics that prevail elsewhere in journalism. We're speaking here of complex and burdensome restrictions -- such as, don't make anything up or solicit bribes or trade favors for things you want.
"If those sorts of practices were put in place overall in celebrity journalism," Grove responded, "I think it would be the death of celebrity."
There speaks a witness with the voice of experience, and -- whatever those federal authorities decide to do about Stern -- we rest our case.
