I finally got around to seeing "Thank You For Smoking" last week -- my bad. It's an absolute must-see for anyone in the PR industry and if I was a university PR professor, I would use this film in my course and devote a couple of weeks to watching and analyzing it. It is a pitch-perfect study of the role of PR in society.
Even though I may be the last person in the industry to see it, I don't want to recount the plot here and spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. But I did want to comment on one of the key turning points, when the main character, Nick Naylor the tobacco industry spokesman, lets his guard down (among other things) and tells a journalist a lot of information he thinks is "off the record."
When the information becomes the basis of a blockbuster expose about him, Naylor complains to the reporter that he thought their conversations were "off the record." Wrong! No conversation with a journalist is off the record unless you get specific buy-in from the journalist before you start talking! That's when you have the leverage and can negotiate the terms of the interview. And furthermore, some of the best times for journalists to get candid information from you is in the informal exchanges you might have in the elevator, sitting down for the interview, or making small talk over lunch, when you think they aren't taking notes.
From my dealings with journalists it is clear that there is no such thing as 'off the record'.
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