Not off the record
When I was a reporter, the school superintendent told me, another reporter and two of his department heads an off-color joke that belittled African Americans and women. (This was not in Guilford County.) The reporter and I were in his office at the time, interviewing him and the aides about test scores. After he told the joke -- he saw me making a note -- he declared it off the record. I shook my head and said that we had made no such agreement. We argued about it briefly -- the department heads both looked horrified; they knew a faux pas when they heard one -- and I finally told him that he had been a public figure longer than I had been a reporter and he knew the rules: You don't declare something off the record after the fact.
I thought of that as I read about Samantha Power's statement about Hillary being a monster and her immediate declaration that that was off the record. Glenn Greenwald at Slate uses that example to write about one of the weaknesses of the American press.
It's extremely likely, though, that had Power been speaking to a typical reporter from the American establishment media, her request to keep her comments a secret would have been honored. In one of the ultimate paradoxes, for American journalists -- whose role in theory is to expose the secrets of the powerful -- secrecy is actually their central religious tenet, especially when it comes to dealing with the most powerful. Protecting, rather than exposing, the secrets of the powerful is the fuel of American journalism. That's how they maintain their access to and good relations with those in power.
And then he cites other persuasive examples.
I wonder if it is yet another one of those big city inside-the-beltway deals that those of us in the sticks don't get. Dan Gillmor describes his practice, which is precisely what I was taught 30 years ago and what we practice here.
When I was a reporter and then a columnist, I had a rule that no public figure -- that is, anyone who'd had experience with being interviewed -- had the right to declare anything off the record after the fact. Now I might agree not to publish something if it wasn't relevant, but if something was to be off the record it would be decided ahead of time.
I didn't have the same policy with people who weren't media-savvy. Sometimes I'd actually say to someone, "Do you realize that I what you're telling me might go into the newspaper?" I'd let them reconsider their words.
Exactly. The corollary is not to let public figures go off the record very often in the first place. Going off the record ties the reporter's hands. You end up with information you can't use. What good is it? I'm a reporter covering the Obama campaign and I know a foreign policy aide thinks his opponent is a monster. No reason to go off the record for that information. (I acknowledge that on occasion, the off-the-record information can provide important perspective...but much less often than people think.)
Do we put quotes off the record after the fact? Probably on occasion, although I hope we do it rarely only with exceptional reasons.
I ended up writing about the school superintendent's joke and his attempt to put it off the record. (The other reporter did not.) My editors and I decided it was relevant because one of the issues at the time was the disparity in performance between white students and black students. I wrote a main story about the test scores and a sidebar inside the paper about the joke. Interestingly, when I told him I was going to write about it and asked him for a reaction, he responded that it was a "chickens--- story" and I was a "chickens---- reporter." I quoted that, too.
Our relationship was pretty icy after that, but I don't recall that I had difficulty getting information from the system. I just had trouble getting quotes from him. That was disappointing because he had a way with words.
Comments (2)
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Hi John,
Couldn't agree more, though I do think between zero-tolerance and coddling official sources to curry favor is a lot room for judgment.
To me, there should be a public interest in reporting the controversial statement, not just shock value. I think the school supe making racial jokes when talking about the achievement gap passes that test. Pretty easily.
And I agree with Gillmor and Greenwald, too, but candidate A's aide not liking candidate B is hardly a big story.Or even a story.
So along with the off-the-record angle, we have another example of the media spending a lot of time on something that doesn't matter.
The sun came up today, but demanded it be off the record.
Posted on March 8, 2008 8:32 PM
Never, EVER, trust a reporter. Never. Ever.
I recall some serious consequences suffered by law officers who ignored this golden rule. One was so egregious the reporter was banned from the detective squadroom and could only conduct interviews through the commander. (This was before the N&R sent her to drug rehab. Bless her heart.)
Another incident resulted in an officer being fired after having sex with a reporter and telling her of sensitive internal investigations. (Do ya think she "used" him and threw him away??)
Never, EVER, trust a reporter. Never. Ever.
Posted on March 9, 2008 11:46 AM