I really don't think that doing investigative journalism counts as "making the news". It would be different if a Journalist approached a Senator and said, hey let's do some insider trading, and then proceeded to write about the Senator's illegal behaivor. But in the case of the Chatroom and the investigator "luring" the politician, you said yourself that there was already speculation that this sort of thing was going on, and when there's smoke, there's often fire. So I don't see anything wrong with a reporter doing some digging in order to get to the bottom of things.

Seek the truth and report it, that's in a Journalist's code of ethics. That means that Journalists shouldn't always be passive about their reporting. There are some incredible stories that would never have come out if Journalists were restricted to simply reporting news as it was brought to them. Sometimes, they have to go out and find that truth in order to reveal it to the public.

Now, there are cases in which Journalists have crossed the line in order to create news or sensationalize it further. And that's seriously messed up. Like with the case of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping. An idiotic reporter actually tampered with the crime scene and ultimately got a man convicted and executed for a crime he did not commit. All because the police were stumped and the Newspapers were desperate to find someone to blame.

So the papers got their story, at the price of an innocent man's life. Journalists need to walk a fine line between simply seeking the truth, and being reckless with their moral integrity in order to find a story.