3 ms·

> After sending the messages, Hershowitz declared his comments “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance. TechCrunch is pub

by sofixa 1y ago

> After sending the messages, Hershowitz declared his comments “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance. TechCrunch is publishing the responses as there was no agreement made What a failure for a spokesperson.

steventhedev 1y ago
More like a failure on TechCrunch. There is an implied agreement and violating it will result in a flat refusal to talk outside of prepared press releases. This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.
- calcifer 1y ago
  > There is an implied agreement The implied agreement is that everything is on the record unless explicitly agreed otherwise beforehand.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Oh, did the poor spyware maker get their expectation of privacy violated?
- terribleperson 1y ago
  That's not how that works. You don't get to decide statements are off the record after you realize you said something that would look bad. Every interview would be a puff piece if that was how things worked.
  - spankibalt 1y ago
    Well, that's how it works with the "Muckrakin's woke!1!!" crowd.
  - porridgeraisin 1y ago
    This will just stop people from talking to journos, like many have done. This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. If it's live, it's practically not possible so it's fine, but for articles I think that journos should respect retractions, regardless of whether it is post-hoc or pre-decided. Now, the "victim" here is NSO, so not expecting any sympathy, but journos do this to everyone, even normal people. > Puff pieces But with the aforementioned rhetoric in vogue these days, every piece of journo is a forced "scoop", leading to most of modern media(social and mainstream, the incentives are the same) being misconstrued non-factual brain damage. Even press conferences, most questions are just loaded and very bad-faith, basically trying to get you to say something they can quote out of context, or use for a misconstrued "non-truth", or a false equivalence. Or sometimes they just make things up! Retarded scoop-bait headlines as well. The root cause for all this is that adversarial rhetoric. Before you say "but the press is an adversary against the government", they do this to sportspersons, and a variety of other normal people too. If they only did this to the designated government spokesperson, it would be OK. Now, this rhetoric itself is a result of "news"[1] companies competing for audiences. A fairly obvious incentive there. On socials too. Engagement is rewarded, leading to the same thing. Furthermore, LLMs if used for content generation, will compete for audience, and even inference-time feedback driven optimisation leads to it giving the same reality-bending outputs. It's been simulated and shown in this stanford paper already: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 [1] they really deserve the quotes these days
    - calcifer 1y ago
      > This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. It's quite the opposite, actually. As Katherine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, used to say: News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising. TechCrunch is not obligated to let NSO's mouthpiece advertise on their pages.
      - porridgeraisin 1y ago
        > It's quite the opposite actually Why are you simply repeating what GP said followed by a call to authority (a biased one at that)? I explained why it is problematic in the 2nd part of my post.
- sigmar 1y ago
  Retroactively accepting comments to be off-the-record as a favor to a subject would be considered very bad journalism. This is not a new or unique circumstance.
robotwizard 1y ago
Haha, but it's crazy to go ahead and publish despite being told not to, by a company that can hack you with almost 100% certainty.
- sofixa 1y ago
  But hacking TechCrunch would be a major PR disaster for NSO (again), so maybe they would abstain.
seydor 1y ago
fitting, considering his job is to spy without consent

by sofixa 1y ago

steventhedev 1y ago

More like a failure on TechCrunch. There is an implied agreement and violating it will result in a flat refusal to talk outside of prepared press releases. This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.

calcifer 1y ago
> There is an implied agreement The implied agreement is that everything is on the record unless explicitly agreed otherwise beforehand.
saubeidl 1y ago
Oh, did the poor spyware maker get their expectation of privacy violated?
terribleperson 1y ago
That's not how that works. You don't get to decide statements are off the record after you realize you said something that would look bad. Every interview would be a puff piece if that was how things worked.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  Well, that's how it works with the "Muckrakin's woke!1!!" crowd.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  This will just stop people from talking to journos, like many have done. This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. If it's live, it's practically not possible so it's fine, but for articles I think that journos should respect retractions, regardless of whether it is post-hoc or pre-decided. Now, the "victim" here is NSO, so not expecting any sympathy, but journos do this to everyone, even normal people. > Puff pieces But with the aforementioned rhetoric in vogue these days, every piece of journo is a forced "scoop", leading to most of modern media(social and mainstream, the incentives are the same) being misconstrued non-factual brain damage. Even press conferences, most questions are just loaded and very bad-faith, basically trying to get you to say something they can quote out of context, or use for a misconstrued "non-truth", or a false equivalence. Or sometimes they just make things up! Retarded scoop-bait headlines as well. The root cause for all this is that adversarial rhetoric. Before you say "but the press is an adversary against the government", they do this to sportspersons, and a variety of other normal people too. If they only did this to the designated government spokesperson, it would be OK. Now, this rhetoric itself is a result of "news"[1] companies competing for audiences. A fairly obvious incentive there. On socials too. Engagement is rewarded, leading to the same thing. Furthermore, LLMs if used for content generation, will compete for audience, and even inference-time feedback driven optimisation leads to it giving the same reality-bending outputs. It's been simulated and shown in this stanford paper already: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105 [1] they really deserve the quotes these days
  - calcifer 1y ago
    > This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. It's quite the opposite, actually. As Katherine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, used to say: News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising. TechCrunch is not obligated to let NSO's mouthpiece advertise on their pages.
    - porridgeraisin 1y ago
      > It's quite the opposite actually Why are you simply repeating what GP said followed by a call to authority (a biased one at that)? I explained why it is problematic in the 2nd part of my post.
sigmar 1y ago
Retroactively accepting comments to be off-the-record as a favor to a subject would be considered very bad journalism. This is not a new or unique circumstance.

robotwizard 1y ago

Haha, but it's crazy to go ahead and publish despite being told not to, by a company that can hack you with almost 100% certainty.

sofixa 1y ago
But hacking TechCrunch would be a major PR disaster for NSO (again), so maybe they would abstain.

seydor 1y ago

fitting, considering his job is to spy without consent