technoculture314-09

I've been following the online circus surrounding Kanye West's infamous stage invasion. He's never going to live down the eternal name of jackass after interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. As Guardian journalist Sam Leith recently observed, West has launched a meme: "Entire websites with titles like 'I'mma Let you Finish' sprang up, bearing images of West, mic in hand, photoshopped into other scenes: he tells George Washington that Fidel Castro had one of the best revolutions of all time.." The tweet on president Obama has now turned into a bizarre work of art. But in all the fuss about West, there hasn't been much debate about whether the president is ever off the record. Reporters use "off-the-record" as a tool to protect sources harbouring crucial information of public importance. In order to keep the identity of the source a secret, reporters attribute the information to another source or credit it to an anonymous source. In the Obama interview, the CNBC crew questioning the president fed audio and video to a pool of rival journalists from ABC. Even if this shared fibre optic line was a long-standing arrangement between major networks, the CNBC journalists can't really promise off-the-record status on behalf of their competitors. And as far as news reporting goes, this was a 'good get' for ABC reporter Terry Moran. He went straight on Twitter to tell the world that "Pres Obama just called Kanye West a 'jackass' for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT's presidential." Twitter was the ideal place to report this kind of news. Predictably Moran's tweet provoked a debate about journalism standards in this information-laden age. I don't believe Moran breached any journalism ethics when he overhead Obama's comment and reported it. The real issue is whether the most powerful man in the world should ever go off the record. All journalists working for a major network know the routine for taping an interview. Before the official interview gets underway, it's common for presenters to strike up a casual conversation with guests. It gives them an opportunity to get to know the source. But it's not the same as off-the-record. Many people don't understand that you can't tell a journalist some juicy information and then say, 'oh by the way that was off the record'. You're talking to a journalist, not your best friend. And there's no doubt that media-savvy Obama would know all about the rules.