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"Gotcha" is an expression few people outside the media business understand. Inside, it is a signal of triumphalism, usually meaning a senior politician, bureaucrat, businessperson or other notable is being nailed for a wrongdoing or dodgy behaviour on the job.

Every young media person hopes to break a story once in her career that will make the powerful uncomfortable. And when you bag a biggie, the media culture elevates you to silver star status. The first of the modern day heroes in the "gotcha" business were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose investigative stories about the Watergate break-in in the 1960s eventually forced the resignation of US President Richard Nixon.

Since then, thousands of investigative stories spearing political and business leaders have appeared in print or TV - in many cases forcing resignations. Some stories are well researched, multisourced, presented in a balanced style, and credible. Others are based on flimsy research, using a single source, presented in a tendentious style, and unfair. The impolite word for it is "smear."

The debate about what's fair and what's not has surfaced in the United Kingdom in the past few weeks. It boiled over after a senior weapons inspector, David Kelly, killed himself after it was revealed he was the source of a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) story accusing Tony Blair's government of "sexing up" intelligence information about Iraq to help make its case to attack the country.

The BBC has been the most respected news organization in the world in the last 50 years, both inside and outside inside Britain. From the end of the Second World War through the Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s, the BBC was a beacon of accurate news reporting for millions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Today, it is still a source of balanced news, in democracies and repressive dictatorships alike, around the world.

Its reputation, inside the country at least, is in dispute since the death of Kelly. It finds itself in a nasty battle for the political high ground with the Blair government, and it could lose. In the mean time, a judge will conduct an inquiry.

(Canada had its own case of a senior government official committing suicide. It happened in April 1957 when Canada's ambassador to Egypt, E. Herbert Norman, who admitted to being a Communist in the 1930s, was exonerated by then External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson. But later, when the US Senate publicized charges that Norman was a security risk, he committed suicide.)

The question is often asked: Are there are any generally accepted rules the media should follow when conducting investigations to insure fairness, impartiality and accuracy? The answer is yes.

First, reporters should cultivate sources, and editors should insist on at least two sources for every investigative story, especially ones with potentially explosive political content. Second, reporters backstopped by editors should satisfy themselves that the source of the story is not simply one malcontent but that he or she represents a more pervasive view.

Third, reporters pressed by their editors should make sure their sources are in influential or senior positions, and then describe how influential and how senior they are in the story. Fourth, reporters should take their finished story to the individuals or institutions they are writing about and include their comments in the article.

In the case of Kelly, it is not at all sure that the BBC vetted the story as thoroughly as it might have. In addition, questions are being raised about whether or not the BBC itself "sexed up" the story to give it more heft. Finally, it is well known in Britain that the BBC regards itself, in some ways, as the "unofficial opposition" to the Blair government, because it feels the official opposition is weak and ineffective. If that attitude prevails, it could quickly lead to other, even more dangerous, attitudes.

The BBC attacked the Blair government's position from the day it committed troops to Iraq. It will be even more vulnerable if it is proved it performed shoddy work that resulted in inaccurate reporting, maybe even contributing to Kelly's death.

So far, there are only doubts about how the BBC's staff worked and signals that attitudes in the newsroom militated against a fair and balanced story. But the BBC reporters also live in one of the most frenetic and competitive media environments in the world, where often the test is not accuracy or balance in stories, but how much outrage they will cause.

"Gotcha" journalism is difficult to rein in once it is let loose, which it often is in Britain. Like politicians or bureaucrats who feel they deserve special perks and business people who are tempted to juggle the books to report good earnings, reporters can slip into a mindset that is dangerous for both the media and the body politic.

The arrogance that power brings is just as often on view in the media as it is the political and business worlds.

James Ferrabee was a correspondent for Southam News in Canada, Africa and Europe who has won a National Newspaper Award for his reporting. He is currently contributing editor for Policy Options, the 10-times a year magazine of the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

He encourages comments on this and other articles to jferrabee@irpp.org.