My experience (limited as it is) with journalists in the Peoria area has been that, when you state that something is off the record, it’s off the record. I haven’t experienced personally or heard from others that journalists in this town have deliberately printed any off-the-record remarks. So I just thought that’s the way it works with all journalists. Then this quote from The Scotsman was published recently:

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Ms [Samantha] Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Power is a Pulitzer Prize winning author for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” and a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. She has now resigned due to the publication of her comments.

There has been quite a bit of outcry against the paper for publishing her remarks when she very clearly asked them to be off the record. The paper and other journalistic sources I checked defended the paper. Typical is The Scotsman’s official response, which basically says that an agreement to be “off the record” must be reached in advance — it can’t be invoked retroactively to take back unguarded comments. The Scotsman’s editor Mike Gilson:

[W]e are certain it was right to publish. I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on-the-record quotes after they have been made. The interview our political correspondent Gerri Peev conducted with Ms Power was clearly on an on-the-record basis. She was clearly passionate and angry with the tactics of the Clinton camp over the Ohio primary, and that spilled over in the interview. Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest. It was for others to judge whether the remarks were ill-judged or spoke of the inexperience in the Obama camp.

Doesn’t he sound pious? Of course, the purpose of the interview was to promote Power’s new book, “Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World,” so all the Obama campaign talk was off the subject, and may explain why she forgot to request that her comments about American politics be off the record until it was evidently too late.

So, did the Scotsman break any ethical rules? Most, though not all, of the sources I’ve consulted say no. Were they jerks for publishing it? Yes. Does it make their reporters look like predatory journalists and their paper look like a tabloid fish wrapper? Yes. Will candidates, aides, and advisors agree to any more interviews with The Scotsman? Not likely.