Off-The-Oops
February 7th, 2008Is there a charitable way to interpret George Broussard’s comments here in a way that means anything except, “We expect the gaming press to do whatever we ask them to do, and we don’t understand how someone might do things differently?”
On a practical front, there’s no plausible rationale for why a prospective release date would be information that a journalist needed to know, but could not otherwise publish. And from a journalistic perspective, Mr. Broussard has just discovered that many journalists don’t allow sources to arbitrarily designate comments as “off-the-record,” particularly without agreeing to that fact in advance. If the source continued to speak, and the Dallas Business Journal happened to stay in the room, the comments were fair game. In fact, a little Googling would have found the same warning… in the pages of the Dallas Business Journal.
You’ll parden my schaudenfreude.
Posted in Geoff, Journalism |
February 7th, 2008 at 4:15 am
Actually, I think journalists do typically respect comments that are made “off-the-record.” The fact that they supposedly weren’t here sounds like they either made a mistake, or it just wasn’t made abundantly clear to them that it wasn’t meant to be printed.
That said, I still find it amusing that even when a pretty broad release date is sort of hinted at, 3d Realms goes out of their way to make sure that they don’t actually mean it. After yet another trailer, is this game ever going to come out?
February 7th, 2008 at 8:50 am
The correct reading here is “George Broussard isn’t very bright,” which has been well known for years anyway.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Jeff, I included the links for reference because it’s a pretty well-known issue for many people who speak to journalists that unless you get an agreement beforehand, your comments are fair game.
I highly suspect that you’re wrong if you’re asserting that there was a mistake or that there was some lack of clarity. I would imagine that the Business Journal had no particular need for 3D Realms’ continued support, since they’re not game journalists, and decided that since they hadn’t agreed to put those comments off the record and they were newsworthy, they would print them.
This is speculation of course, but it’s definitely a well-known industry practice. That’s why the links I posted show so much advice to people who deal with the press, urging them to be careful about what they say.