I like the part in Chinatown (1975) when Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) gets drilled on the ethics of being a professional snoop by a man in a barber shop.
Jake tells the offending party that working at a bank's mortgage department is just as bad—if not worse—than the invasive work of being a private eye. After all, the Mortgage Man has to put people out on the street, whereas Jake merely brings truth to light.
The Mortgage Man criticizes the publicity that Jack's work garners: "We don't tell the newspaper who we put out on the street." The unfairness of the accusation is what gets Jake riled: the Mortage Man would have to deal with people questioning the validity of his livelihood if the newspapers publicized his work of putting people out on the streets when they can't make rent, but as it stands, Jake would have to deal with a lot more public outcry if families getting put out work that gets printed in the newspaper, and gets opened up to public opinion. Kind of like how the value of a movie (or some other popular text) gets called into question, while the less publicized products of labor do not.
This barbershop scene is a neat microcosm of the ultimate message of the entire film, a message which is encapsulated nicely in the final lines of the last scene—"Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown."
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