Pompous twits
Tucker Carlson, who had a go at the journalist who got those choice quotes from Samantha Power, has just had his show axed. Good - he comes across to me as a right little twerp.
It is indeed true that there are different conventions in the US and UK over the use of 'off the record'. Here's how a friend of mine put it to me yesterday:
In the US, interviewees can ask that a particular quote can be off the record. If the journalist really wants to use the quote, he is supposed to go back and ask the interviewee if it is OK to use it. If they say “no” then it is supposed to be left out.Exactly. Gerri Peev behaved completely properly. For Carlson, of all people, to have a go at her for journalistic standards is very, very rich. Here's what the Huffington Post reveals:That said -- there are some shades of gray in this case. You are supposed to say “I am going off the record here – please do not quote this” BEFORE you say something, not after. Samantha Power must be very naïve or very arrogant to have thought she could take back the “monster” quote.
But this seems to be a bit of sore spot for Tucker. In a 1997 column, Howard Kurtz wrote about a dust-up over an article Tucker Carlson had written in The New Republic, in which he slammed Grover Norquist as a "cash-addled, morally malleable lobbyist" for his dealings in the Seychelles islands -- but failed to mention that his father, as U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, had butted heads with Norquist over those dealings.I have my own interest in such quotes and the issue of what is and is not on the record.At the time, Tucker Carlson told Kurtz that there had been no need for him to run a "disclaimer" because "I didn't talk to my dad about the piece."”
A few years ago, my biography of David Blunkett got a fair bit of coverage because I extracted some quotes from him about his fellow Cabinet ministers. I took the precaution not only of recording the interviews but, because I was so gob-smacked by his frankness, of reminding him repeatedly that he was on the record. I was, if anything, too fair to him - he was a big boy well versed in the media and didn't need protecting from himself. But I was so startled I thought I should be ultra-cautious.At no point did he ask for me to ignore the quotes. And to give him his due,
when the book was published, he did not deny saying anything I had reported him as saying to me about his fellow ministers. Given that I had (have) them all on tape, and he knew that, he could hardly have done so.That wasn't the end of the story, however. In the book, I revealed his view of Lord Stevens.
As I put it:Blunkett considered Stevens to be a weak commissioner, lacking in judgment. He could talk a good game but was rarely able to deliverI cited David Blunkett’s response to Sir John’s behaviour over the incident when, in June 2003, Aaron Barschak (the so-called “comedy terrorist”) made it past the police’s supposed watertight security into a party at Windsor Castle. Sir John promised root-and-branch reform and strong disciplinary action. And yet 11 months later there was a similar breach.
Clearly, Stevens had failed to do what he had promised. Blunkett called the commissioner, pointing out that both their jobs were on the line . . . Blunkett was not impressed with Stevens’s response: more bluster, as he told his colleagues, and more empty promises.I then wrote that Blunkett had told one of his advisers:
That man [Stevens] needs to start feeling the pressure he is under.Blunkett had been even angrier when, in February 2003, he discovered that tanks had been placed around the perimeter of Heathrow. I quoted his description to me of the police’s decision:
It was male, macho, silly laddism. Boy’s Own comic stuff. They couldn’t help themselves.Lord Stevens' autobiography revealed, however, that Mr Blunkett had written to him on the day that my book was serialised:
[A]long came a two-page letter from Blunkett himself . . . apologising for all the rude remarks about me, and alleging that he had never made them. Indeed, he claimed that he had hardly spoken to Stephen Pollard, and believed, on the contrary, that I had been a splendid commissioner.He must have forgotten the six hours of on-the-record interviews, not to mention the days I spent with him, shadowing him at the Home Office and Labour Party conference.
Despite his famed memory, it seems that Mr Blunkett's deserts him sometimes. Curiously, however, this only appears to happen at convenient times. When the news broke of the speeded-up visa for his own son’s nanny, he claimed to have no recollection of having raised the matter with his private office. And he lost any memory of having spoken to me for my biography.
I realise that this isn't quite about the idea of what is and isn't 'on the record'. But it is about what should and should not be reported. And in that context, Ms Peev deserves congratulations on an interview well done. And Tucker Carlson deserves to be treated as a pompous twit.