As a young reporter and editor many years ago at Fairchild Publications (industry newspapers), I much appreciated its policy of never accepting anything off the record. If an interview or briefing was said upfront to be off the record, the reporter was to get up and leave. If something "became off the record" during or after the interview or briefing, it would get printed if relevant. Fairchild's motto was: "Our survival depends on printing the news."

What a blessing that policy was! If I were to accept anything off the record and a colleague in my city room or an out of town bureau were to pick it up and run with it, no source would believe that I hadn't put the colleague up to it. Also, Fairchild policy at the time forbade editorial staff to consort with or even talk to the advertising people. The only contact with the advertising staff was a simple admonition when they had placed an airline ad not to run an airline crash story adjacent to it. Fair enough!

Casual--I was reacting to your opinion that the decline was caused by doe-eyed US reporting. I never thought your opinion was the PEW study (?????). They provide no rational for the decline--I offered that it could be complex, just discussin n theorizin....no worries

LWM, you misnderstood my post. but its ok

Yes, Hillary Clinton is the MONSTER that we have been waiting for!

The Obama campaign's nasty backbiting manipulation of the media is coming back to haunt them.

Does MSNBC have an ombudsman? House rules for journalists? I realize that Tucker is about as far from a real journalist as can be, but does MSNBC want its real journalist to follow his edict?

Another former reporter here-- I was taught, in j-school AND at the little newspaper where I worked:

1) Any "off the record" request has to be before the interview becomes, not after the fact.

2) The request is a request. It is not an edict. The reporter must agree verbally to this request. If the reporter doesn't agree, then the interviewee can decide whether to proceed with the interview-- or, gee whiz, not say anything he doesn't want reported.

3) Truth, not making the interviewee feel warm and accepted, is the aim here.

But that's supposing the press isn't just another arm (or finger) of the powerful, I guess.

As I understood it when I was working in newsrooms, interviews were assumed to be on the record unless the subject requested off the record beforehand.

There are many forms of background interviewing. An official can have an informal wine and cheese gathering with reporters at home, or at some other place where there can be an aspect of privacy. Speaking of cheese, the big cheese national reporters can meet a subject under a Potomac bridge, or in a Georgetown pizza parlor in the dead of night, and do off-the-record, or "deep background" (deep background with a deep dish). But off-the-record, as I learned it was either off or on, and understood as one or the other before business commenced.

In broadcasting, particularly radio, reporters are (still I think) required to tell a subject in a one-on-one if they are being recorded as an interview begins, giving the subject the option of continuing or not. And of course, a reporter can stop the tape, ask clarifying questions, or just go back and forth with the subject if there is a comfort factor to be concerned about.

I wonder here if this dynamic is where Russert 's notion that he asks permission to use a subject's remarks before air has come from. There may be some confusion as far as that goes in the broadcast dynamic, but it sound like crap, the way Russert's remarks are presented, to say that a reporter has to ask permission, seemingly on every question, and the response.

It's either on the record or it isn't and that standard has nothing to do with a reporter taking notes at public political events, or in a situation where a subject, like Samantha Power, is talking to reporters on the street.

She can't tell reporters not to go with any stupid remarks she may have made on the fly after she made them.

So, what high standards Tucker Carlson may be talking about is lost on me under the circumstances that may have been in play with the Scotsman interview.

It is also clear, and it has been clear to me for a long time now (it is also painful, having tried to be a real reporter in this country) the difference in tone and gravitas when one compares British interviwers with mainstream American ones. It comes down to this: in this country, in whatever market, officials expect a certain level of pablum to be allowed to get through or to be used. With that, there is also an expectation that reporters behave in a more obseqious manner. Your selection of clips shows the difference. George Bush expects to be allowed to send out any fluff or hackneyed rhetoric every time he sits down with the scribblers.

Call it the "fireside chat" format or standard.

Or, call it a syndrome.

Call it anything, but much of this, as a problem of American style, is very much influenced by the hidden persuaders - consultants, handlers, and any variety of public relations flacks who have compromised real journalism in the best sense and tradition of the term.

"journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here,"

Not as long as an asshole like this jerk is around.

Thank you, thank you for so beautifully expounding on this subject.

The subservient behavior of journalists has bothered me for years. This precious access they claim they have by deferring to the powerful's wishes gains them nothing but access. (Apparently they really enjoy the ass-kissing.)

I blame a lot of this, at least in part, to the rise of journalism schools and journalism as a "profession." In the days when most reporters weren't even college graduates, let alone journalism/communication/print media specialists, they were outsiders and proud of it.

Nowadays, journalists are worried about keeping their 401Ks flush. Plus they like to be in with the in crowd. They get to know the backroom stories while being the gatekeepers for the rest of us, complicit with the rich and powerful.

This attitude has run rampant for a long time, but has really come to full bloom after 9/11, when journalists didn't want to appear to undermine the U.S. and "aid the enemy."

Pussies.