The storm that engulfs News Corporations, as a result of the News of the World fallout, is turning into the perfect storm and a “perfect injustice”. Plato saw it coming. The Myth of Gyges in his dialogue The Republic, sets-out with uncanny and clear foresight what happens when power, deception, secrecy, and abuse of trust converge in a collusion of “the perfect injustice”, what today we would call corruption: A condition of total deception by which the unjust make themselves look just and proper.

The myth explains how anyone with a magical ring that made them invisible could use their power with the authority of a position of trust to commit crimes that served their interest under the pretence of justice and propriety. And do so with total impunity. The News of the World phone-tapping scandal has all the makings of “perfect injustice”.

A powerful news organisation in a position of trust whose professional role is to inform the public on matters of public interest abused that role. Rather than engaging in the dissemination of information that is the legitimate and expected role of the media, the News of the World secretly engaged in stealing information from unsuspecting citizens using the most nefarious means. It was both illegal and unethical. Worse still, and this is when it becomes unconscionable, it was corrupt. When a thief breaks and enters into a house to steal it is both illegal and unethical.

It is not corrupt, however. For the thief does not owe a pre-established duty of trust not to steal from the house-owner. Although acting unethically and illegally, the thief is nonetheless acting according to his self-appointed ‘role’ – which is to steal. By contrast in the case of the News of the World whose recognised role as a media organisation is the dissemination of information for the public good and not the misappropriation of information, its actions constitutes corruption.

It places News Corp as an international media conglomerate into a position of now having to show cause why it is “fit and proper” to continue operating as a news organisation. Ironically, and with no little measure of hubris, by exclusively serving its own financial interest and not that of the public good, the News of the World fatally engaged in self-defeating conduct that destroyed rather than promoted its business interests.

But the News of the World scandal is even worse than a mere case of media corruption. It is corruption on a grand scale involving the three pillars of democracy: the media, the police and the government. Not only police officers were bribed but as suggested by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently, politicians may also have been involved. Corruption of this scale aims at the very heart of public ethics.

It raises the crucial question how an advanced democratic country that chastises other countries for human rights violations can allow and tolerate such flagrant violations of the most basic requirements of moral conduct, integrity, fairness, and decency, in its own backyard.

And this brings us back to Plato. His Myth of Gyges clearly demonstrates how things can come apart and go terribly wrong for a society that allows conditions of perfect injustice to fester: An unwholesome collusion of power that involves the lack of accountability, the abuse of public trust, and an exclusive motive for self-gain that overrides the motive for the public good, all perpetrated in secrecy and under the pretence of “public propriety”.

Fortunately for us good journalism still exists to ferret out and expose corruption. Acting like a Platonic “guardian”, the UK Guardian brought the News of the World affair to light. In an age where information has become a valuable marketable commodity we need good and ethical journalism more than ever. We also need the inculcation of an ethical culture within the four estates of democracy, the government, the media, the police and the church, and the clear separation between them that does not allow the kind of corruption by collusion that we have seen in the News of the World scandal. The moral of Plato’s Myth of Gyges is that ultimately behaving badly is bad for one’s own self-interest. Being good is its own reward precisely because it pays to think and act ethically.

Dr Edward H Spence is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. He teaches media ethics in the School of Communication and Creative Industries at Charles Sturt University. His book Media, Markets and Morals (Wiley-Blackwell 2011) that explores media corruption was published recently.