Reporters, like politicians, have a way of looking silly and significant at the same time. Take the stunt last week at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where two correspondents for a French TV network tried to sneak fake bombs into airline baggage compartments in order to test security measures—and get a juicy story. For all of its sophomoric grandstanding, their hoax will likely live on in journalism-school debates. It raises questions a lot more explosive than the harmless chunks of molding clay and attached alarm clocks seized by police. Does the press have a role to play in testing air safety? If it does, were the reporters right to risk breaking the law? The normal ethical hairsplitting in such cases was informed this time by the Dec. 21 crash of Pan Am Flight 103, which prompted the stunt in the first place.

Actually, there were two media bomb hoaxes last week. In Amsterdam, a Dutch TV station boasted that it had successfully placed a fake bomb in an attaché case aboard a London-bound KLM flight. The same day, Bruce Frankel and Alain Chaillou, New York-based correspondents for TF1, a major French network, undertook a less subtle test. They attempted to place suspicious-looking brown packages on three flights bound for Paris, where colleagues would be waiting with cameras. After a Trans World Airline employee noticed one of the packages in the cargo area, police were summoned and Frankel admitted to the caper. He alerted authorities that similar "bombs" had been checked at the Air France and Pan Am cargo counters. (U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney later said that the package might well have made it aboard the Air France flight; the airline disputes that claim.) The reporters spent the night in jail, then were released without bail.

It must have been sweeps week or something on French TV. Inside the packages were typed messages that read: "Congratulations! You have found our phony bomb!…We will tell our 18 million viewers who watch our daily newscast at 8, that we found your company to be keen and consistent with security matters." John R. Wing, the lawyer for the TF1 reporters, insists that the hoax was legal. His clients are charged with "willfully and maliciously conveying false information," a statute designed primarily to prosecute people who deliver bomb threats. While authorities say that Frankel violated the law by telling airport personnel that the brown package contained videotapes, Wing says that statement was technically true—it did include tapes, along with the "bomb." And he will argue that there was nothing "malicious" about checking air safety. U.S. Attorney Maloney obviously disagrees. He says the "shameful" stunt "will invite more crackpots to attempt to break security."