So… you’re a campaign press secretary in a big-time presidential, senate or gubernatorial race where screwing up a contentious, high-stakes media call will have significantly negative implications — to your candidate, and possibly your ongoing employment.
You decide there’s no way you’re going on the record, and propose “off the record” to help guide a reporter’s thinking without leaving your fingerprints behind.
This is a negotiation, pure and simple.
The reporter has no obligation to go along. And these days, more often than not, they push back and say “on the record” only. But this, too, is a bargaining position.
The compromise is often speaking “on background” — meaning you must then negotiate how you’re characterized in the reporting. Are you going to remain semi-cloaked by insisting to be someone simply “with knowledge” of the situation being reported? Or, is the reporter going to insist you be identified more clearly as “an official close to” Senator X? Or, still less hazy, “a former staffer” to Senator X?
This negotiation “process” is also something inexperienced campaign press operatives and governmental spokespersons frequently screw up — causing much pain, anguish and shouting once the story “moves” and your superiors demand answers as to the process and protocols you followed — or stumbled into.
It’s a dangerous process — fraught with peril if you’re an amateur trying to pretend you’re a big time operator.
But the truth is that anyone who has played the game long enough at a serious level has royally screwed up.
The primary reason?
One’s knowledge of on the record, off the record, background and deep background (the most murky of all, which we’ll leave out for this basic discussion) is hazy — and you fail to specifically negotiate your terms with a reporter in a manner where he or she understands — 100% — the mutually agreed upon deal.
This means that before you say one word, one must stipulate precisely what you mean, the specific way you will be identified, and receive the journalist’s full consent and understanding of this information transaction. It’s always best to be the ongoing initiator of ‘terms’ as opposed to more passively “agreeing” to them.
And one of the biggest errors is simply agreeing, generically, to being on “background” — which exposes you to almost “on the record” identification, leaving that crucial element in the hands of the journalist.
The source of the text below is a bit of a mystery, as its been sitting in a file for a few years.
But the reporter sentiments are straightforward and worth reading.
I personally find Susan Page’s explanation to be the best. She’s also a pro with whom I’ve worked in my previous campaign life. Notice how she pushes her sources incrementally forward. Nicely done.
It also reminds me why I left the campaign communications business a few years back: it was no longer fun. But that’s for another day.
Without further ado, here’s how five DC-based journalists answer the question, “What does off the record mean?”
Toby Harnden, Washington Bureau Chief, London’s The Sunday Times: “It’s a bar at the Hay-Adams. It’s also a term used in Washington by people who are about to tell you something really boring that you probably knew anyway, or was blindingly obvious, and you wouldn’t want to publish. But if you did want to publish it and you agreed to it being off the the record (it’s an agreement the journalist has to be part of) then you could use the information but not attribute it to anyone by name or affiliation or quote it directly.”
Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today:“In my view, ‘off the record’ means you can’t use the information in a story and you can’t use the information in reporting – for instance, going to a second source and asking him or her to confirm what you learned off-the-record from the first source. However, that’s often not what people intend when they say ‘off the record.’ They often mean “on background” – that is, that the information can be used in subsequent reporting and even quoted as long as their name isn’t attached to it. So I often follow up an ‘off the record’ comment by saying, ‘OK if I use this information and just don’t attribute it to you by name?’ Nine times out of 10, they’ll say yes. But I don’t feel free to do that with information designated ‘off the record’ unless I have that subsequent exchange. Actually, if you then say, ‘I’d really like to use this information, but our rules are very restrictive on the use of anonymous sources,’ five times out of 10 they’ll put it on the record – better still.”
Charles Johnson, contributor, The Daily Caller and freelance reporter: “Whenever someone asks something to be off the record, I recoil. As a writer, the whole purpose of the enterprise is the record. I push them for on background, of course, but sometimes that won’t do and so I end the conversation. Usually I gently remind the person I’m chatting with that he, in the words of Robert Novak, can be a source or a target and that’s sufficient to get him talking. Occasionally I feel compelled to go down the ‘Off the Record’ route in the pursuit of the story. Off the Record must be negotiated and it is a two-way street. If I catch my source chatting to another friendlier reporter to their cause, I stop honoring it. I tell sources this ahead of time by email. I also think that you need two OTRs before you publish anything. OTR comments are not to be shared in the pursuit of anything less than truth. I find it very distasteful when Washington or New York journalists trade on their access to report insidery gossip in a way that suits them.”
Anonymous reporter: “I’ve always thought of off the record as two things — something you are told that you can’t use from someone, but it’s meant to help point you in the right direction. If you’re told that and it’s backed up by a different source than the original off the record source, then it’s fair game. It’s also just your friends bullshitting and they know that you’re a reporter and they don’t want you using it, so they say ‘off the record.’”
Andy Gross, producer, NBC Universal: “Basically, as a producer, everybody is on the record since I’m there and the camera is there, the cameraman, maybe a sound man, and sometimes even a correspondent. So nobody ever tries the old ‘this is off the record’ which is a pure BS cop-out anyway.