jbrotherlove

“1. the issue with the kanye deal is that when the president is getting miked up and there is chit chat going out over a fiber line, is it inappropriate for another network to broadcast (in a cyber way) the chit chat. I think it was inappropriate, and abc did too, which is why they took it down and apologized,” she said via e-mail.

“2. I do believe the issue of ‘off the record’ is different when the person you are talking about is the president. I don’t particularly care [if] the President swats a fly or calls Kanye an ass off the record. But maybe that’s just me. If he changes his health care stand off the record, that is unacceptable. . . . I would stop. I would object. If he insisted, I would ask him (and the press staff) if I could negotiate later to put the comments on the record.

“Keep in mind, no President I’ve covered ever really thinks he is completely off the record, or he would not be talking to a reporter.

“3. On the other hand, I have been involved in dozens of ‘off the record’ conversations you will never hear about, because i will not talk about them. That’s what ‘off the record’ means.

“Background conversations, like the meal with Secretary Rice, are far more useful, because you can use the information without attribution. For a television reporter, most of what happens without a camera present is de facto background anyway. If what a reporter is looking for [is] information that will help you better understand an issue, background is useful. Surely we know (or, as news professionals, ought to know) where to draw the line without cutting off our noses to spite our faces — and putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage at the same time.”

via Richard Prince’s Journal-isms

SXSW Panel Picker has ended and I am really hoping my panel idea is selected. Thanks all who voted! There’s no shortage of fodder for the panel, that’s for sure.

By now, the entire world knows how Kanye West made a jackass out of himself at the 2009 VMA Awards (hey, if the President can call him a jackass, who am I to argue). Predictably, Kanye’s rant set off a swarm of anti-Kanye responses — including, a slew of racially charged tweets such as this one from amber_berry:

I wonder if Amber Adamson (who knows if this is really her name) really wants this to be her first impression on a job interview? At church? At PTA? Hell, at the pumpkin pie shop?

As the real-time web gets faster, I hope we are realizing that anything can be cached on the web — forever. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be ourselves online. But we certainly need to be aware that anything we say or do (even offline) can be “picked up”, rebroadcast and remixed. So if you’re not prepared to defend it, you should think twice about what you’re doing.

This is not news, per se. But Twitter has been particularly susceptible. The ability to instantly fire off anything on your mind has generated some interesting content, to say the least. I suggest you think before you tweet. Even “protected” accounts are only as private as those you follow.

But wait. There’s more at Harry Allen’s Media Assassin.