How a news story is made

La deontologia sits in the middle of this list, and it is the entry an English reader is most likely to misfile. The word does exist in English, and it belongs to moral philosophy: « deontology » names the family of theories that judge an act by the duty it obeys rather than by what it brings about, and outside a lecture on ethics almost nobody says it. In Italian the same word has a working life. La deontologia is the professional conduct of a trade — what a journalist, a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant may and may not do — and it is written down: il codice deontologico is the code the professional body enforces, and un illecito deontologico is a breach of it that can cost somebody a licence. So la deontologia vieta di pagare un testimone is not a philosophical claim at all; it reports a rule with a disciplinary committee behind it. English has no single word for that and reaches instead for « professional ethics », « the code of conduct », or « professional misconduct » once the thing has been broken.