What exactly does off the record mean to Bob Kravitz?

Well, as I said earlier, in this case I think Kravitz was wrong. I would never use an off the record statement. Period.

My point was that Sampson was naive if he thought that telling a reporter something like that couldn't eventually get him into trouble.

When someone talks to me, I am a reporter. I am a reporter 24 hours a day. If you tell me something that I can't use, I still know it. And if I'm good at my job, I can use that knowledge somehow for the product I produce.

What Kravitz should have done is said: "I believe Kelvin Sampson doesn't care about the rules. I believe he's probably violated them plenty of times before without giving it a second thought." In an opinion piece, he'd be able to get away with that, I think.

If Sampson didn't like that, he'd only himself to blame, because he's the one who told Kravitz. If he thought Kravitz was just going to forget that information as soon as he told him, then he is naive.

 

We don't know what was said during the conversation.
We just know how Kravitz felt about it.
Sampson could've said "Damn right, I called recruits. But they don't know the half of it. I also gave them $10,000."
Yes, Kravitz could've written the same thing without mentioning the conversation. I'm sure he has a million times. This column showed that Sampson never took the rules seriously, even after he was caught, even after he promised there would be no problems.
That's pretty important at a place like Indiana. Especially considering the school hired him despite his shaky track record. Considering, I think the column served the readership.
This doesnt mean I think journalism ethics should be ignored. Every situation is different. Hopefully, the Star took this situation seriously. Hopefully, there was a discussion about this column before it ran. Hopefully, some pretty high-ranking editors were involved.
I think Kravitz's column bent the rules, but I don't think he violated them. It was a risky move, but I think it was the right one.

Perhaps SportsJournalists.com's leadership could contact Kravitz or the Star's sports editor, and invite him to post an explanation?

 

How can we take Kravitz's rants about Sampson and Indiana's ethics seriously when he seems to have violated journalistic ethics? Because, after all, he didn't REALLY do anything bad. Just what everybody else does.

 

Well if that's the case, no reporter who has lied should ever write about President Bush and WMD. No reporter who been arrested for DUI should ever write about a public official busted for the same crime.

 

Maybe. But Kravitz broke significant codes of journalistic ethics ... in the very column meant to chastise someone for their ethics. People screw up, sure. But let's try not to let the hypocrisy be so blatant next time, 'k?

 

Unless Bob wants to explain what happened here, we're not going to know the specifics of what was agreed upon upfront with Sampson. But let's say Sampson says, "Yeah, come to campus and let's sit down for a chat. I'd like to have an off-the-record conversation to get to know you and explain myself a bit, but it's not something that's for publication. Are you ok with that?"

To me, that's what seems to have happened. If Kravitz had said, "Well, I'll come talk to you, but I'm not agreeing to anything being off the record" that's one thing. It seems from Kravitz's column, that was not the case. He wanted to meet with the coach and give him an opportunity to explain himself, and perhaps Sampson thought Kravitz might be more sympathetic once he heard his explanation (which was, again, not for print, but perhaps to soften Kravitz critique of things in the future). But once you agree to enter into that kind of agreement -- "I won't write about this" -- whether you're a columnist or not, you don't break that agreement. You just don't. You don't break it if the guy turns out to be a cheater or a scumbag. Because the next guy might not be a cheater or a scumbag. And your word now means nothing.

As for the reasons that you might agree to an off-the-record convo, sometimes it's about building trust for the NEXT conversation. Or, as others have said, if Kravitz wanted to use what Sampson told him to try and get his "Sure, it's cheating, but it's not really cheating" explanation from other who know him or the situation, then the conversation was worth having. It's about a tip or a hunch.

It's not, "Well, this guy is no longer of any use to me, so I'm fine with betraying our agreement now. Plus, he has no respect for ethics, so I guess I don't mind revealing the nature of our earlier conversation, even though I gave my word I would not."

 

Exactly. I'm continually amazed by how many posters here seem to have absolutely no professional scruples. And you poison the water for all of us.

I like Bob's work. But he -- and his editors -- screwed up big-time on this one.

 

Easy there, Montezuma. Let's not go overboard. If you try to go off the record sometime soon and are told, "Sorry, but after what that Kravitz fella did, I'll never go off record with you again." ... Then you can play the poison card.

That said, I cant disagree with a word of Double Down's post. Very well stated.

My point all along is sometimes everything's not black and white. There's plenty of gray areas in this business. This is one. I give the Star leeway because I don't think printing quotes and recording thoughts from an off-the-record conversation are the same thing. Granted, we're talking a very, very small area of gray here, but what if Kravitz started the meeting simply by saying that he would never quote Sampson?

If that's the case, he did nothing wrong.

 

Yeah, that's why I didn't make any reference to ethics earlier. I just think it looks bad and who needs that if you can avoid it?

Just a hypothetical, suppose a regular source tells you something off the record and then in subsequent conversations you talk about it further, is it a given that any reference to that topic is also off the record? I think not, but I think you need to spell it out to the source.

 

Just to show how journalism ethics sometimes makes strange bedfellows, it seems my favorite blogger, The Big Fozzie Bear, got Kravitz to explain himself over email. People were also apparently making fun of Kravitz's hair, which I guess is what got him to respond, at least in part.

Here is Kravitz's response, according to The Big Fozzie Bear. (The link is slow, so I'm quoting the response.)

http://thebiglead.com/?p=4796#more-4796

 

Maybe he did that because he knows TBL asks questions with no real followup.