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"Eleven agreed to speak on the record, under the condition of anonymity" Minor nitpick as a former journalist - being on the record means not being anonymous,
by JacobAldridge 15y ago
"Eleven agreed to speak on the record, under the condition of anonymity"
Minor nitpick as a former journalist - being on the record means not being anonymous, and being anonymous means being 'off the record' (the 'record' refers to your name, not your comments).
If you're really interested, there are kind of four loosely defined categories of sources: On the record (quote and name me), Off the record (quote me, but don't name me), Background (Don't quote me, but use this information to verify other research) and Deep Background (this will point you in the right direction, but you'll need to verify with multiple other sources). As I said - loosely defined, but on/off the record is pretty clear.
- zeemonkee 15y agoInteresting - was watching All the President's Men the other night and they used these terms - I was wondering about the distinction.
- nl 15y agoThat doesn't match my understanding, and Wikipedia[1] agrees with what I thought (and this article implies): "Unattributable" (aka anonymous): what is said can be reported but not attributed. "Off-the-record": the information is provided to inform a decision or provide a confidential explanation, not for publication. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_sourcing#.22Speaking_terms.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_sourcing#.22Speaking...
- talmand 15y agoThis was my understanding as well; "on the record" meant it could be reported while "off the record" meant it could not. But then I'd have to say that what Jacob says makes more sense.
- JacobAldridge 15y agoYeah, "loosely defined" is probably an understatement - key rule if you are ever interviewed and want some level of control is to ensure you and the journalist know the definition not just the phrase. Another one that I discovered in my brief time in journalism was that the medical reports (stable, critical etc) you hear most often have no medical basis - they're used by the media, and many healthcare professionals (at least, in Aus 10 years ago) didn't much like them because of their vagueness. If you want my working definition of those, you basically have two scales: condition (fine, minor, serious, critical, dead) and change (improving, stable, deteriorating). Combine the two and you have an excellent soundbite - "The driver is in a critical but stable condition".
- daredevildave 15y agoWhen I worked at Sony we were told there is no such thing as off the record when you are talking to a journalist.