David Brooks, Obama’s Shovel-Ready Claims and Ethics

Another reason people don't trust MSM reporters

When President Barack Obama was selling the $787 billion Stimulus bill, he claimed a good portion of the money would go to “shovel-ready jobs.” David Brooks knew a year ago that this claim was false and stayed silent about it until recently. Michael Volpe explores the ethical question of Brooks’ continued silence.

This video is making the rounds because of this statement.

“Yes. Well, I shouldn’t have confessed this. He said this to me off the record about a year ago. But it hasn’t…”

After this, Jim Lehrer quickly commented that because it was off the record Brooks can’t talk about this, but Brooks continued.

“It was obvious. I mean, you are trying to build a stimulus package. And when they were trying to build it, believe me, they would have loved to have filled it with infrastructure jobs. But the projects just didn’t exist. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t find them.”

While most media is discussing the revelation, some should be asking if Brooks violated a major rule of journalistic ethics. Now, this article says that a president is never off the record.

According to veterans who have covered the White House, the answer is that while the phrase “off the record” is open to interpretation. Many times what is really meant is that the material can be used, just not for attribution. A president can expect that if there is prior agreement, some comments won’t be published or broadcast.

Of course, that’s not what Brooks did here. Veteran journalist Matt Vadum offered two different reasons why such a conversation would be revealed. “it’s OK to “burn” a source if they were lying to you and you can prove it” In another case Vadum explained, “Because POTUS already went on the record with the quote this would be a technical infraction (I’m just making that term up) rather than a substantive infraction”

To non journalists, this all may glaze your eyes over. After all, who cares, besides other journalists, if David Brooks violated some rule only journalists care about? Yet, this is a vital issue. When speaking to sources, the entire relationship is built on trust. Sources must believe that all private conversations remain private. If not, no one will ever speak to reporters. On many occasions, sources were reluctant to speak to me about sensitive information even though they were assured our conversations would remain off the record. Obviously, these folks aren’t caught up in journalistic ethics. They just don’t trust reporters.

It is exactly the kind of violation that David Brooks exhibited on national television that leads to this kind of mistrust. David Brooks was on national television talking about an off the record conversation. What happens the next time a reporter assures a source that a conversation will stay off the record and that source replies that David Brooks revealed exactly such a conversation? If the president can’t trust that his words will remain off the record, how can some nameless person?

What’s most disturbing about this violation of trust is that Brooks never really explains why he did it. It appears to be a frivolous breach of trust. The reason that the words off the record are so sacrosanct is exactly because there will be numerous times when that off the record conversation could be used. That appears to be what happened here. It appears as though Brooks couldn’t resist telling what he knew.

Yet, that’s exactly what someone who asks for a conversation to be off the record is trying to avoid. Almost any reporter will tell you that off the record conversations are more substantive and much longer. People are more relaxed, and thus more detailed and free to speak their minds, when they know that no words will be attributed to them. It is these conversations that set the bedrock for any stories.

By so loudly violating this trust, Brooks has sent a signal to all that reporters don’t take the oath of confidentiality seriously. Once that bond is broken, so too is trust. When there’s no trust between source and reporter, far less people speak to reporters.

(David Brooks didn’t respond to an email for comment for this story.

by Michael Volpe
image: observer

Michael Volpe is an investigative journalist whose previous contributions to DBKP include Tony Demasi: Living Large, Falling Hard in Chicago and Kevin Coval: From Popular Suburban Jock to Def Poet.

Michael writes regularly at The Provocateur.

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