In A New Email, Elon Musk Accused A Cave Rescuer Of Being A "Child Rapist"

There's nothing ethically dubious at all about what the reporter did. The NYU discussion you link to begins:

> On the record, on background, not for attribution and off the record: These are prearranged agreements between a reporter and a source, which govern how specific information can be used. These deals must be agreed to beforehand, never after.

A conversation doesn't become off-the-record when one party utters the magic words and continues without input from the other party.

If you really want to be off the record, you just have to get agreement from the journalist before you shoot your mouth off

Musk was being extraordinary slimy there. He tried to simultaneously put doubt on journalist mind and convince him that the diver is indeed child rapist. He prefaced it with unilateral "off the record" without buzzfed being able to disagree, so that he can simultaneously do the above while pretending something else in public or during court case.

Journalists not playing along is their prerogative. Otherwise the most slimy person acting on bad faith gets always his way while everyone else is getting used.

Musk is businessman and enterpreneur. He is used to use this tactic of unilateral agreement to regularly to manipulate, abuse good will and use people around him to get his way. It is good when someone occasionally stand up to that.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make?

It doesn't matter if Musk would not have said these things "on the record" or not, since he never had an agreement to be quoted off-the-record. It would seem to be his mistake.

The NYU article also says:

> When dealing with individuals who are not experienced in talking with reporters, journalists should make sure ground rules and potential consequences are clear, and then perhaps offer leeway.

I am not sure, however, how much Musk deals with reporters via email and how often he uses these terms

A nice lesson for the rest of us to learn.

Oh my; I thought the images were blurry so you couldn't easily read Musk's email that was "off the record".

> why can't I vouch for it?

because it's not [dead]

Simply put, it's increasingly harder for anyone to actually defend Musk. Over the past few years there's been quite a few threads on HN praising Musk, worshiping the ground he walks upon, making him into a Tech Savior and my guess is that when he says something indefensible like this, the best you can do is flag and move on.

Which, well, it's probably for the best of HN in either case. There's really not much else to say on this topic, although I hope that this whole nonsense he keeps perpetuating helps cull the cult surrounding him here. It's especially interesting because a few months ago I argued with someone that Musk will accept responsibility when he does something bad or says something stupid. And yet here we are.

It is quite strange. Gossip about how Steve Jobs behaved in private is routinely upvoted, despite being of approximately the same interest and value as stores about musk's public conduct - however the latter is routinely flagged. I guess if it was a story about how insightful he is instead, then it would be on the front page.

Two reasons I think. First, understandably by now the moderators must dread these kinds of submissions, given that they inevitably evolve along the same acrimonious lines. Supporting this submission by pinning it or unflagging it is sort of making a rod for their own back. Second, some people are fanatically pro-Musk and they downvote or flag without second thought. I don’t think it’s coordinated, I just think the result is rapid downvoting and mass flagging.

My advice is to email them if you feel strongly about this or other articles, and ask them to pin it or unflagging it, it understand if they err on the side of protecting their sanity rather than the submission.

Yeah I'm also getting the impression he's kind of losing it. I mean the first tweet could have been a simple error but then instead of saying sorry he just seems to be digging himself deeper. Also 'pedo guy' seems pretty non pedo http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6132427/Elon-Musk-ac...

Seriously. I don’t get why anyone would say that to a news org even off the record given how easy it is for things to leak. Really dumb on his behalf.

I mean he already tweeted the same accusation weeks ago so there's not much to keep private in any case.