A few weeks ago I came upon a news item that discussed negotiations to “secure the release of two kidnapped journalists from Fox News.”

So it’s come to this, I thought: Fox News is so desperate for journalists that it’s actually kidnapping them.

Upon further reading, I realized that the wording was infelicitous. The journalists in question weren’t kidnapped by Fox News. They were from Fox News and had been kidnapped by someone else entirely. Fortunately they were later released unharmed.

But that Freudian slip got me thinking about why, as a conservative, I am appalled by the conduct of the people at Fox. It’s not that their reporting fails to meet the “fair and balanced” standard to which the network claims to aspire. Truth is, nobody meets that standard. That’s fine with me. A smart reader can weigh one point of view against the other and come up with a close approximation of the truth.

No, what bothers me about Fox News is its ethics code. It doesn’t seem to have one. Consider the two stars of the Fox News TV lineup, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Both do something that is so far outside the ethical boundaries for journalists that it isn’t even listed in most ethics codes: They do commercials.

When I’m driving along in the afternoon, I often turn on my radio and hear Sean Hannity shilling for Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Frankly, he’s pretty convincing. I’ve never been to a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, but when I hear that spiel right before dinnertime, my mouth starts to water.

But after dinner when I turn on my TV there is that same pitchman posing as a journalist. Sean Hannity is not a conservative. He just plays one on TV. The same goes for Bill O’Reilly. The man who claims to work in a “no-spin zone” in the evenings spends his afternoon not just spinning but pitching.

None of this would bother me if these characters didn’t purport to be conservatives. We conservatives have principles. We don’t say things because people pay us to say them. We say things because we believe in them. That doesn’t seem to apply at Fox. There may be some code of behavior there, but only in the sense that there is some code of behavior at those brothels outside Reno. In both cases, no law is being broken but someone’s honor is being traded for a price.

What makes it worse is that these guys often pose as journalism critics. Listening to Hannity or O’Reilly critique honest journalists is like listening to a hooker critique the Miss America contest. It may be entertainment, but it sure ain’t journalism.

I discussed this with Gary Hill, a broadcast journalist who is chairman of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists.

“When people act as journalists they develop a certain level of credibility,” Hill said. “One of the several reasons organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists frown on this sort of thing is that they feel they can trade on their credibility.”

Fred Brown, who is also on the SPJ ethics committee, noted that in the early days of television, newsmen would routinely shill for various products. But the other networks dropped that practice decades ago, Brown said.

It remains common practice in radio, and Charles Osgood, who does “CBS Sunday Morning” on TV, also does commercials when on radio. This strikes me as unethical as well, but Osgood is more of an entertainer than a serious news commentator, as Hannity and O’Reilly purport to be.

When I called a Fox spokesperson to ask whether the network has a code of ethics, it took me about five minutes to explain what I meant by “code” and “ethics.” A day later, a spokesperson still hadn’t gotten back to me.

The problem is at the very top, I suspect. Fox Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes is a former political operative for various Republican politicians, beginning with Richard Nixon. Political flacks are wonderfully amusing guys, and I love to chat with them. But they all have one thing in common: a commitment to winning at any cost. All’s fair in love, war and politics – as long as you don’t get caught.

Journalism is a different game, one that Ailes doesn’t seem to want to play. In a recent profile by the New York Observer, Ailes professed to be offended when people refer to Fox as “conservative.” But that’s exactly the problem. Ailes is right. Fox isn’t conservative; it’s partisan. The Fox talking heads worship the current crop of Beltway politicians in a manner that would shame even the most obsequious anchors on the other networks. Hannity shills as openly for George Bush as he does for that steakhouse.

The difference is that the steakhouse no doubt delivers a real steak. Fox News gives us only the sizzle.