►Journalists and sources make deals about how sources are identified (or not identified) in news reports. Terms include on the record, on background, on deep background, and off-the-record. It’s important for journalists, people who speak to journalists, and audiences to understand the differences. Journalist Kurt Wagner describes the differences among them, noting that “Journalists with any training will go to great lengths to protect their sources.”
►The Poynter Institute has published multiple articles regarding journalists making agreements to receive “off-the-record” information from sources. Topics include:
- Why going off the record can be a trap for journalists, because it can limit their ability to report.
- The questions journalists should consider before agreeing to go off the record.
- Why not every promise must be kept involving source identification in a story, particularly when the source lied or otherwise misled a news organization, or the source later talked publicly about the information that had been in a sourcing agreement.
Sources:
- https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2018/why-off-the-record-is-a-trap-reporters-should-avoid/
- https://www.poynter.org/archive/2004/questions-to-ask-before-going-off-the-record/
- https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2018/how-and-when-to-break-your-off-the-record-promises
►Making a promise to provide confidentiality to sources may bring both legal relief and legal responsibility. Most states have reporter privilege laws (sometimes called “shield laws”) that allow journalists to usually keep sources confidential in court proceedings. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press provides a state-by-state guide to privilege laws. But all journalists should be aware of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991), in which a news organization was ordered to pay damages to a source promised confidentiality but later identified in a news story.
Sources:
- https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-privilege/
- https://www.oyez.org/cases/1990/90-634
- https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/741/cohen-v-cowles-media-co
►Journalists and public relations practitioners use the term “embargo” to define deals in which an organization will give information to journalists with the understanding that it will not be published before a specific date and time. Embargoes can give journalists time to fully report stories, and PR practitioners an opportunity to control when stories are published for their own publicity purposes. But as The New York Times noted, embargoes raise ethical questions: Must a journalist adhere to an embargo without the opportunity to reject it? Does it hinder reporting? And what happens to an embargo if it is broken by another news organization?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/insider/embargoes-reporting.html