Publishing anything that's not presented in a "this is blatantly on the record" or "this is blatantly in public and observable/reportable by anyone" context is

Publishing anything that's not presented in a "this is blatantly on the record" or "this is blatantly in public and observable/reportable by anyone" context is unethical. Unfortunately, this happens all the time because it generates a lot of buzz for the outlet, just as happened here. In fact, there are outlets whose entire business is made up of publishing "off the record" stuff, like tabloids.