Kate Betts Blog

As a journalist I used to write “OTR” in the margin of my notebook when an interviewee had announced they were going off the record.

But it is a really risky thing to do as an interviewee. Imagine you gave me as the reporter a really juicy piece of information… what do you expect me to do with it?

Forget all about it? Try and check it out with another source? Quote the information but not where it came from? Tell everyone down the pub?

It is a really dangerous game to play and you need to think why you are doing it. You also need to be very aware of the reporter who says “off the record then…. What would you say about….?”

Why are they asking you? What are they going to do with the information?

There are a lot of reporters who do respect off the record, but a lot who don’t. And do you know who you are dealing with?

There are times when “OTR” is useful – but only in the hands of people who regularly deal with the media and know what they are dealing with.

While working as a press officer many years ago I did occasionally use “OTR” with reporters I knew well and could trust. It can be a method for suppressing a story that really has no basis. For example: reader complains to paper about the way they have been treated by the organisation. This could lead to bad publicity for the organisation. But what the reporter hasn’t been told is the other side of the story – perhaps the way that person has been behaving or some background information that can’t be made public.

By telling the journalist that information it can kill the story off and save the organisation’s reputation.

But even that doesn’t always work. I remember once a reporter from a weekly paper saying to me when I tried the “OTR” approach: “That’s all very well and I realise it effectively makes it a non-story, but I’ve got a gap to fill in the paper, so I am going to run the story from the reader’s point of view anyway.”

You win some, you lose some….

So unless you are an experienced PR person – don’t even try off the record – I say (on the record).