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Comment by css | Hacker News Reader

> Though Musk prefaced one email with “off the record,” BuzzFeed News did not agree to that condition of the correspondence.

> (Per common journalistic practice, a conversation is off-the-record only if both parties agree to the terms.)

I assume that Musk would not have said these things "on the record" so does Buzzfeed's rejection of his claim mean anything here? I understand that there are no "laws" but the ethics of this feels... dubious. Especially since the NYU Journalism Handbook [0] they link says this (emphasis mine):

> In general, it is best to avoid off the record conversations; another option might be to converse off the record and then try to convince the source to agree to waive the agreement.

[0] https://journalism.nyu.edu/about-us/resources/ethics-handboo...

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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.

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