Since I am a journalist, I am the last person from whom the Business Secretary, who told "undercover" Daily Telegraph journalists he was "declaring war" on Rupert Murdoch, and Tommy Sheridan, exposed as a perjurer who lied to claim damages from the News of the World, would wish to receive sympathy.
So I won't pretend.
But both cases raise issues of their own about press behaviour.
Was the Telegraph right to send reporters to pose as constituents and draw from Mr Cable his indiscreet remarks? And if Mr Sheridan now faces a stiff dose of jail, is the media to blame as claimed by supporters jostling the reporters covering the trial?
The editor of the Telegraph is Tony Gallagher, who joined - effectively as head of news - from the Daily Mail (some time after my departure so he is not only blameless in that matter but, on later becoming editor, had to live with the handicap of being without a star Paris correspondent, blogger and folk bloke rolled into one).
I was about to say that I owe him no favours but that is not strictly true; Gallagher did give me a terrific interview for Salut! Sunderland, because Sunderland were playing his own club, West Ham, in which he revealed more about himself than former colleagues had learned in years of working alongside him.
But it is difficult to argue with his achievements. He was technically deputy editor when the Telegraph broke the enormous story about MPs' expenses. However the real editor, Will Lewis, was away on some soaraway management course so Gallagher ran the operation, and deserved all the plaudits he has received for the way in which he masterminded a great scoop with genuine public interest.
I am a little uneasy about undercover - others would say underhand - journalistic activity, but it can sometimes be justified.
The coalition has led to broken electoral promises, unholy alliances and decisions to make people - including those who are on low incomes or otherwise vulnerable - poorer. We are entitled to know about the tensions behind the scenes.
Mr Cable has said the Telegraph disclosures undermine the way MPs go about their business and deal with constituents. Well, I suppose the revelations on dodgy or allegedly fraudulent expenses claims undermined the way they went about managing their personal finances.
What possessed him to think he could speak in such an an open and combative way to strangers who would have been at perfect liberty in any case to go straight from the meeting to tell journalistic contacts all about what had been said? the reporters merely shortened that possible process.
Tommy Sheridan's beef, like Mr Cable's, is with Murdoch. He has been convicted of lying on oath about the News of the World's claims that he had cheated on his wife and visited a sex club.
I could not care less about the substance of those claims. What he does in his private life matters to the public only if it is in direct conflict with what he does in office or shows him to be an appalling hypocrite who had, for example, campaigned for the closure of sex clubs and the chopping off of adulters' hands.
But I do care about people lying to the courts when they pursue newspapers in the hope of collecting handsome tax-free libel damages. It has nothing to do with fighting Murdoch, who runs great newspapers as well as rotten ones, or capitalism; Archer did it, so did Jonathan Aitken, Tories both, and they went to jail.
Sheridan should have realised, too, that it probably wasn't necessary to perjure himself. Libel juries are usually made up of people who loathe the press so much that they will award generous damages even to rogues.
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