the entire taylor swift and kanye west saga will go down as a barely registered footnote in the history of society. It's here now, it simultaneously entertains, annoys and humors us and it'll be gone tomorrow when another celebrity does something ill advised and you tubed. So, also, will the President's remarks about Kanye West; some off the cuff remarks made off the record eavesdropped and twittered by some short sighted members of ABC News.

What might outlast the remarks of either party is the examination of ethics of and the influence of technology on the journalistic world. We have been hearing the drum beat for a decade now of how the internet is spelling the end for print journalism. And over the past five years we have seen numerous long running and highly regarded newspapers close the printing presses and become entirely virtual endeavors. The assencion of, first, blogs and then tweets has each heralded a new round of bell ringers, tolling the demise of conventional journalism.

But as the bells have been rung, journalism has worked quietly to restructure itself. While newspapers are closed, conventional reporters have, for the most part, shifted well into the virtual, immediate new age of information. The world of blogs and twitters has been efficiently co-opted and brought into the respected fold. There have been squabbles along the way, breaches of percieved protocol and ettiquette, the old guard feeling understandably ill at ease with the web loving whippersnappers and the whippersnappers feeling just as justifiably put off by the cold shoulder the established journalistic engine has given them.

But the twittering of the President's "off the record" comments could spark an honest enquiry into the state of journalism as it is pushed and pulled into the 21st century. For as the people delivering the nwes has adapted so, unfortunately, has the news. The world continues to become less private as people, either willingly or unwillingly, have their lives moved ever more into the public sphere.

One article I read this morning questioned whether the President should ever be off the record. That as long as a mic or camera is around, it is unfair for anyone to expect any sort of privacy. While this is, unfortunately, true it also opens up a host of questions of just how expectant should we be of our privacy to be invaded. If the meer presence of a mic or camera in our general vicinity is enough to convince us that any notion of the private needs be banished, then what do we make of the litany of cell phones, traffic cameras and emails? Around and within our lives is a litany of devices and actions that allow our movements and thoughts to be recorded and, on some level, open for public consumption. While we may view our email as private, it takes one bored hacker and an hour of work to make it non-private. The same with cell phones which as numerous leaked pictures and contact lists of the rich and infamous have proven to us. And this is excluding the possible idea of our government monitoring our activities under the overly wide umbrella of laws such as the Patriot Act.

This is where a perceived code of conduct, an if not written then silently agreed to sense of ethics, has set the world of journalism apart. The New York Times has long held to the motto of "all the news that's fit to print." But is an offhand remark by the President, during a part of the interview process that is considered to be off the record, really fit to print in any form? For that matter, what of the litany of celebrity gossip? Or the small town "local" gossip that eats up greater and greater amounts of local television and print news coverage? Rather than "all the news that's fit to print," it has seemed that the motto for journalism as a whole has become "all the news people are willing to buy." While it is unlikely to expect this one instance to cause an entire industry to re-evaluate itself and possibly begin to take itself in a new direction, maybe it will at least work to stem the tide of having to expose every remark, every incident, every mistake or mis-utterance to the unblinking eye of the world. Maybe the question will be asked, "Should this really matter to anyone?"