So a little story from the annals of off and on the record. Back 20 years ago I was reporting on the long ago story of the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy, who was having an affair with then Congressman Gary Condit. Condit had hired a flak to help him navigate the scandal...
2/ and I was talking to the flak for my latest story. I was reporting it for TPM and Salon. So I'm talking to the flak and she starts pushing me on the idea that Levy got killed basically because she was a ho and slept around and well that's what happens. I'm using the charged...
3/ phrasing because that was definitely the kind of language and the argument she was making. I was dumbfounded, couldn't believe what I was hearing. And we were definitely on the record. I mean, I called up his spokesperson. We didn't say anything about off the record ...
4/ so we're on the record. It's the spokesperson's job to provide information and quotes. But I'm thinking, is it possible she's confused and thinks we agreed we're off the record? Is she assuming we're off the record even though she has no right to assume that?
5/ Now I also know that if I say wait do you know we're on the record, she'll know that I'm going to write a negative story and I'm giving her an opening to retroactively try to change the terms of the conversation since she now knows I'm not planning on a writing a piece ...
6/ not about Levy's purported promiscuity but rather the spokesperson for the person who was then the prime suspect in her disappearance trying to push reporters to investigate Levy's sex life. I did not want to give her that opportunity since what the spokesperson was doing ...
7/ was not only highly newsworthy but deeply gross. So I let the Chandra was a ho discussion play out and then I said very deliberately, "Okay, now let's go off the record, okay?" "Sure", she replied. Gotcha.
8/ If she really thought we were having an off the record conversation my comment would have immediately triggered a "Hey, WTF, we're already off the record." That settled the matter and I wrote the story.
9/ Someone asked if I had a link. I didn't. But I just hunted it up on Google and here's the story. salon.com/2001/07/16/con…
10/ It was a fairly harrowing experience. This was six or seven weeks before 9/11. And in those comparatively innocent days this was THE big story in DC. The piece triggered a firestorm that went on for a couple days and a lot of it focused on the credibility of ...
11/ the reporter - i.e., me. I wasn't that young. I was 32. But I was fairly new in journalism. Had been doing it for about three years. The Condit folks denied it. And the journalism critics rightly identified the real issue as not whether the flak had said it but whether ...
12/ the conversation was on the record, whether I'd broken the rules and burned the source. Like I said, not a terribly comfortable place to be since if you come out on the bad side of a high profile story like this you can really be damaged goods professionally.
13/ That's exactly what I had in mind when i asked to go off the record. I wanted to be 100% certain. And I was. I also had the benefit of a great editor @KerryLauerman who totally backed me through the whole thing. When I was asked are you sure there wasn't some confusion ...
14/ about on the record/off the record I could say with confidence, "absolutely sure." Final funny side note. Since Condit was a Democrat I was briefly the toast of the right. I even did an appearance on Hannity.
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