MARREN: Off-the-record is on-the-record

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September 20, 2009

By Tim Marren<br><a href="mailto:tim.marren@lockportjournal.com">E-mail Tim</a> The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Sun Sep 20, 2009, 12:20 AM EDT

LOCKPORT — For those who didn’t catch it because of all the Leodis McKelvin coverage this week, President Obama called rapper Kanye West a jackass.

If you were a Western New Yorker watching television early this week you had a good chance of seeing either the West blunder on Sunday or the McKelvin blunder on Monday. Both were all the talk late into Monday night and certainly the rest of the week.

West was criticized for interrupting Swift as she accepted an award at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards to say that Beyonce deserved it instead.

Obama went on to call West a jackass when he thought he was in an off-the-record discussion with CNBC before an interview.

The president and CNBC’s John Harwood were making small talk while the camera guys were setting up. Talk got to West and his selfish move.

“I thought that was really inappropriate,” Obama says. “What are you butting in (for)? ... The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She’s getting her award. What’s he doing up there?”

A questioner in the same room chimes in, “Why would he do it?”

“He’s a jackass,” Obama replies, which is met with laughter from several people.

The president realized he said something stupid and that chances were really good that a mic was live. It was.

ABC reporters, who overheard the conversation with CNBC’s crew, Twittered that the president just called West a Jackass. Gossip site TMZ.com had the audio. It caught like wildfire.

By the end of the week discussion started focusing on the great on-the-record, off-the-record debate with journalists.

Here’s my thing: I hate off-the-record. I don’t think the term should exist because the usage shouldn’t exist. The president, politicians, people of so-called power, athletes and really anyone who talks to a reporter should either say what you want quoted or don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to see quoted.

If you don’t say it, you can’t expect it to be quoted. If you don’t say it a reporter won’t be confused as to whether something is on or off-the-record.

If you know in the back of your mind that something you’re about to utter is off-the-record, just don’t say it at all.

Now this isn’t an endorsement of my next favorite, “no comment,” it’s just a plea for those being interviewed to make everything on the record or don’t say what you don’t want quoted.

What we also run into are the types who say “off-the-record,” with hopes that the reporter will report it with unnamed sources or through another source that will go on-the-record. The cynic in me says this is intentional to still get their scandalous “you didn’t hear it from me, but...” news in the news, without it coming from to them.

Too often it does and that person gets burned and then everyone is ticked.

But this situation is different.

Obama, like Bush, who was constantly saying stupid things, and all the presidents before the two of them, are never truthfully off-the-record.

As any good electronic journalist will tell you, if there’s a mic in the room, assume it’s on. It’s what even some veteran news broadcasters forget and what makes for great outakes, but it’s something the president should know full well.

Watch what you say — always.

I still believe journalists can be trusted and credibility still dominates, despite what some may say. But I also believe off-the-record is just senseless chatter that just leads to problems.

If you’re talking to a reporter, you’re on the record.

Tim Marren is the managing

editor of the Lockport Union-Sun

& Journal. Contact him at Tim.Marren@lockportjournal.com or 439-9222.

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