Keeping Your Name Out of the Paper

While writing a story a couple of years ago, I interviewed a student who thought he'd successfully evaded any questions. As a result, he thought, held managed to avoid being mentioned in the article.

In the next morning's paper, he was in the lead paragraph in the top story. Enraged, he told a mutual friend and Crimson editor that I should stay away from Lowell House, if I wanted to stay healthy.

Did I mention that this individual was a prominent member of the football team?

Nothing ever happened, of course. I survived to write more stories.

But had the person I interviewed understood a bit more about journalism, the situation never would have gotten that far. No threats were in order.

The Crimson follows standard journalistic policy in regard to when and whether to quote people.

Any conversation with a person who identifies him-or herself as a reporter is assumed to be on the record. That means it can be quoted (accurately, of course), and that the interviewee's name can be used.

In order for a conversation to be "off the record," (and thus not quotable) a person must inform the reporter of this at the beginning. Requests to take a conversation off the record at the end will usually not be agreed to.

And this was the football player's mistake.

So what can you do, if avoiding a reporter's question is your aim?

You can always refuse to answer it. But be prepared to see your name in the next morning's paper, along with the statement that you refused to comment.

And that's about it.

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The issue of when it was legitimate for the Crimson to quote someone got complicated last semester by the increased use of the Internet.

Crimson reporters who quoted from messages posted to Internet newsgroups caused a furor, and angry epistles were written in reply to the general Harvard newsgroup as well as the one meant for the Computer Science 161 course.

Prequent Internet surfers were shocked that a newspaper would invade what they considered their private space.

"This is not a published forum," wrote David Holland '95. "I would hope that if [The Crimson] overheard you on the street they wouldn't quote you by name. Netnews isn't much different from that."

What Holland, and others who felt similarly, didn't realize was that posting a message to the Internet is not the same as saying something to a friend on the street.

In fact, it resembles putting a poster on a kiosk, or a bulletin board. And someone who puts up a controversial or incendiary poster on a kiosk should be prepared to have it quoted in a newspaper.

The only complicating factor is that newsgroup postings can be forged, as kiosk postings can. Just as a person can put up a poster and sign it with someone else's name, so can a sufficiently devious hacker.

Therefore, The Crimson should try to ascertain that a message posted on the Internet was in fact written by the person whose name appears as its author.

But even if you deny responsibility for your messages, be warned that you may not avoid mention in the next day's paper. The fact that someone is forging them may well be news.