Scandals in the corporate and religious world have given a battering to business people and clergy in the latest ethics ratings from the people who conduct the Gallup poll.

The latest of the group's Honesty and Ethics surveys shows that 29 percent of respondents think that business executives have either "low" or "very low" ethics. Perhaps influenced by the scandals involving companies such as Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., only 17 percent rate the ethics of business leaders as "high" or "very high," compared with 25 percent a year ago.

The ratings of clergy are better, but the child-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has eroded those rankings, Gallup said. Clergy ethics were rated "high" or "very high" by 52 percent of respondents - the lowest ever, and down from 64 percent a year ago.

Overall, nurses are the highest-rated profession, with 79 percent rating their ethics "high" or "very high." At the low end were telemarketers, with only 5 percent in those categories.

The survey, conducted Nov. 22-24, asked 1,017 adults to rate the honesty and ethics of 21 professions.

Fair disclosure? Journalists were near the middle of the pack, with 26 percent rating their ethics as "high" or "very high."

- Cliff Peale