In a recent spasm of radio and TV interviews about #hackgate the last couple weeks, everyone wanted to know whether a News of the World scandal could happen here.

I mean, we’re just as bad, aren’t we?

After all, Howard Kurtz says: “British tabloid tactics are rampant in American journalism, too.”

The Wall Street Journal’s special committee on editorial integrity (true, rather hapless as oversight bodies go ) felt compelled to assure readers this morning that hacking and bribery do not, repeat not, take place even at my old paper, perish the thought.

But, actually, the answer is no, you won’t see a NotW-style scandal unfurling here anytime soon.

The first thing to keep in mind is the sheer scale of NotW-gate—rampant criminal activity on an institutional scale, an entire newsroom running amok, with, as we’re learning, active participation of top editors, including Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks (who herself told Parliament of paying police for information, before saying she couldn’t remember actual instances). On top of this, NotW includes senior News Corp. figures playing key roles in keeping the crimes under wraps, including Les Hinton who told Parliament he had checked thoroughly and found it was only a single reporter, and James Murdoch, now deputy COO, who authorized payments to hacking victims and was well-briefed on what it was about, despite what he told Parliament. (For a nice summary of #hackgate sins, see Chittum.)

So, first question: What’s the precedent in modern U.S. press history for anything like that? There isn’t one (true, there isn’t one in Britain either, but stay with me).

Some people, including Kurtz, try to cite the Chiquita Banana case as analogous. No, it proves the opposite point. In that case, the reporter, Mike Gallagher—so secretive about hacking into company officials’ voicemails—didn’t even tell his own partner, Cameron McWhirter, who later wrote about it for us (the link only goes to the top of the story; I’m trying to get a better one). The Wall Street Journal at the time reported sources saying that some of the hacking calls were made from a payphone near Gallagher’s house.*

Not only was Gallagher criminally prosecuted as a matter of course; not only did his paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, run a massive, groveling, page one apology; not only did its owner, Gannett, fork over a $10 million-plus settlement; but to the everlasting shame of one and all, the paper also retracted the entire, 18-page project (which is still floating around out there, thanks to an environmental site called Mindfully.org), even though the hacked voice mail touched only a fraction of the series. (A forthright New York Times piece by the excellent Douglas Frantz probed serious allegations against the company, which included harming workers with pesticide use, evading local land-ownership laws, and bribery.) The county convened a special prosecutor against the newspaper. Civil litigation ensued, etc. etc.

That’s one reporter, 13 years ago. And it was Armageddon. NotW is a whole news organization, 4,000 victims, over years and years, with knowledge, and perhaps complicity, running to the highest levels.

Sure, there are the famous fabulists, Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, and, I’m sure, plenty of others discovered and undiscovered. ABC staffers misrepresented themselves to go undercover for the Food Lion story. They were eventually vindicated, but it was literally a federal case. NBC staged the GM pickup truck Pinto explosion and didn’t let on.

Egregious screwups. But institutional scale criminality? No.

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