In retrospect, Bush was a buffoon and puppet of the evil lying sociopath Dick Cheney. The bar continually gets lowered for Republicans: first Reagan set the low standard and W easily bettered it, then He Whose Name I Will Never Again Say will set it so low it can never be beaten.
So… from a functional standpoint, would your ethical rule produce any different results from the following ethical rule:
If I’m a reporter, I record it anyway, if it’s a Republican president. Leave it to my editors if there is sensitive stuff I shouldn’t leak, then leak the rest. If it’s a Democrat, I honor my pledge.
I wouldn’t treat a Democrat any differently. Obviously, if you’re one on one “off the record” you can’t do that, but if you’re one of a group of people meeting “off the record”, you’d be doing the public a disservice by honoring your pledge.
Thank God **Bricker **is here to turn the topic to the important subject of liberal hypocrisy. Otherwise we might have to discuss the actual issue of the President-elect spending all his time picking fights with the media.
I understood you to say that your behavior breaching the agreement is justified by the fact that you’re dealing with a lying sociopath:
Did you consider Obama a lying sociopath?
Who did you vote for, again?
I mean, who did you hold your nose and force yourself to vote for, while never missing an opportunity to mention her faults?
Your confusion is utterly justifiable and the fault is entirely mine as I did not state clearly what I meant. The fact that the Orange One is a lying sociopath is beside the point. I should not have mentioned it. What I believe is that the press’ duty is to the public and not to any public official. Their job is to get the information out to the public, whether it makes the official uncomfortable or not. So when they address a group of reporters “off the record”, leaking anything is fair game so long as there are no national security concerns. If you’re speaking off the record in order to whine about something, then that whining should be made public information regardless of the officials understanding that he would not be quoted. And of course, no, Obama is neither a liar nor a sociopath.
Not speaking legally, but in my personal opinion the agreement was null and void when he stabbed them in the back by turning what was supposed to a “meeting of the minds”, a time to find common ground, into an attack on the Forth Estate. This isn’t the first time he has pulled a bait-and-switch on reporters: Remember when he had that “Gonna Talk About The Debate” press conference where he paraded out a bunch of women accusing the Clintons of various things?
Sorry, Obama has lied plenty, just like any other politician. What matters is the content/severity of the lie, frequency and the reason.
Clinton.
Why?
Are you invoking the SDMB rule that since X is bad, any person pointing flaws in critiques of X is irrefutably presumed to support X?
Back in March, before Trump vs. Clinton was ever a choice, I posted this.
So I did miss a couple of opportunities to mention her faults.
John Oliver put it better by comparing the Democrat with a cookie with some raisins, with the raisins representing the lies. You do not like them; however, you have to deal with just a few with Obama or Clinton. Trump is like getting a shower of raisins while you eat a cookie stuffed with them.
That’s why he’s on TV and I’m not. 
I agree. While I doubt any person can succeed in politics past the level of, say, small-town mayor without ever lying, I think Obama’s one of the more honest men to hold the office. And he’s a fundamentally decent man, as well.
I appreciate the clarification.
If ethical rules don’t produce the desired result, let me offer a practical one: breaching the deal and getting caught sharply limits the journalist’s future ability to exercise his duty to the public.
I’m also curious how far the duty to the public goes.
Let’s imagine a power couple, Fred and Grant, husband and husband team, married to each other and each working for different news agencies. (Not remotely relevant to the story that they’re gay; I just think there’s value in normalizing same-sex marriage and when I started to type, “…and wife…” I decided to change it. If it bothers anyone reading, I apologize.)
Anyway, four days before the election, each happens to be present at an off-the-record event for the two candidates for President. And, amazingly, each happens to record a reasonably damaging faux pas from the candidate. Both agree with your ethical rule with respect to duty to the public.
But discussing this at home immediately after the event, Fred and Grant disagree about what to do. Fred assumes they will both leak their damaging information, but Grant says, “Wait a second: let’s think about this. The polls are dead even. My candidate’s gaffe could literally swing the election to your guy, and we both oppose him. Worse than oppose: we know he favors policies that are wrong, just dead wrong. Our duty to the public is to leak your guy’s damaging info, and not mine, because objectively, I know we both agree that your guy would be a disaster for the country.”
Fred says, “I think our duty is to the truth.”
Grant: “Yes, in an abstract sense. But this is happenstance, pure chance, that I recorded this flub. It’s not fundamental to the candidate.”
Fred: “Neither is your candidate’s flub.”
Grant: “True, but your candidate’s fundamentally wrong for the country. The greater truth is served by not hurting the chances of someone who could make a real difference. Think of the Supreme Court nominations alone!”
Now you, BobLibDem arrive for dinner at their place, and they share their discussion with you. Do you side more with Fred, or with Grant?
Ah, Trump as Eccles cake, Democrats as Welsh cake. I get it now.
This sort of meeting sounds a bit like Putin dressing down the oligarchs in 2000 - basically, he wouldn’t interfere with their money-making as long as they left him and politics alone (with one example prosecution pour encourager les autres).
But perhaps Trump doesn’t think that strategically and didn’t quite understand the tip when he got it?
I side more with Grant. To me, prevention of an evil candidate winning is more important than moral consistency.
I don’t have much hope of this happening. When he threatened to sue everyone who accused him of sex crimes, I think the public lost their credibility on caring about a president not being crazy or dangerous. This election isn’t about Trump, it is about how indifferent to incompetence and danger the US public are in our elected officials. We will still be this way after Trump leaves office. The worst part about this election is what it says about the American people. We are a very cruel, bigoted, gullible, mean, inept bunch and we get the democracy we deserve.
I do wonder if he will pressure the FCC to get revenge on media outlets that are hostile to him. Hostile = anything other than fawning. Which in this case probably even includes Fox news. Imagine that, Fox news isn’t fawning enough to the republican president and he seeks revenge. Ironic.
Also the media spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to be ‘fair and balanced’, so they treated Hillary’s emails like it was the equivalent of anything Trump did. Also the media never even reported on the suspected rape of a 13 year old.
nm.
I would go back to your earlier point and agree that in general, media should just refuse to attend any event that is supposed to be off the record. The problem is that media is commercial and competitive, and the one that tries to abide by journalistic ethics in this way is going to be at a disadvantage compared to the ones who don’t. Likewise with leaking off-the-record meetings. You can do it once, and then you’re cut off.
Trump’s game is pretty clear: trade access to the Presidency for favorable reporting. And on the other side of the carrot-and-stick, he’s threatened to sue news media for critical reporting which he somehow imagines is “defamatory”. The Trump ideal is for all news media to be consolidated into one, with one of the Trumpkins in control of it. The name “Pravda” is already in use, but they could call it the English equivalent with the same irony, “The Truth”. Or maybe just stick with “Breitbart”.
I saw and heard quite a few Democrats saying this exact thing about Hillary. A couple people I know if you want anecdotes.
And in terms of ‘off the record talks’, I recall Obama doing that routinely and without people secretly recording the meetings or saying nefarious things about it - the Rev Sharpton meetings, etc…
If you didn’t bitch about that why bitch about this?
I didn’t bitch about there being “off-the-record” talks, did I? I said that he pulled a “bait-and-switch”. It was supposed to be a round-table “meeting of the minds”, an opportunity to smooth the waters-that is a good reason to have such a meeting off the record. Instead, he called them in to bitch them out and call them liars, then use the “off the record” pledge to shut them up. By the way, if this meeting was off the record, why was I just now listening to Trump’s blonde mouthpiece discussing(whitewashing) some of the things supposedly discussed in that meeting?