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EDINBURGH’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER
ISSUE VI
WEDNESDAY 12 MARCH 2008
WHERE NEXT FOR CUBA? » 19 America’s leading expert asks if the leadership change in Cuba can have any real effect
TV NATION » 21
Scottish culture minister Linda Fabiani on why we need a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation
Scottish newspaper forces resignation of Obama aide Off-the-record quotes published by The Scotsman spark debate on journalistic ethics Joe Crimmings Photography
Ben Judge ben.judge@journal-online.co.uk
AN OFF-THE-RECORD COMMENT published by The Scotsman last week has forced a key political aide of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama to resign from his campaign team. Samantha Power, a Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prizewinning author, referred to Hilary Clinton, as “a monster” and saying that “she is stooping to anything [to win the Democratic Party nomination]” in an interview with journalist Gerri Peev. Ms Power’s resigned after her comments—which she believed to be off-the-record—were picked up on by the American media, causing a storm as they appeared to be in direct contravention of Mr Obama’s pledge to run his campaign free of negativity and gratuitous name-calling. In a statement, Ms Power said: “With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser to the Obama campaign. “I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oftstated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose
of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.” A Professor at Harvard and director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, a Time magazine columnist and a Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ms Power was an unpaid but highly influential political adviser on foreign policy to Mr Obama during his Democratic primary campaign. In the interview with The Scotsman, Ms Power, while discussing Mr Obama’s position on the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its effect on the Democratic caucus in Ohio, is quoted as saying: “We fucked up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win. “She is a monster, too— that is off the record—she is stooping to anything. “Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too. “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The
amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.” Mrs Clinton’s campaign team immediately condemned the comments, with her spokesman Howard Wolfson saying: “I, for one, do not believe that acting like Kenneth Starr [prosecutor in the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton following the Monica Lewinski affair] is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.” However, the publication of Ms Power’s comments has put the Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper at the centre of a trans-Atlantic debate on journalistic ethics. A number of US-based political commentators have lambasted the newspaper for printing off-the-record remarks, claiming that reporter Gerri Peev had abused Ms Power’s trust. Although the interview was agreed to be on-the-record in advance, and was tape-recorded in its entirety, Ms Power specified that the controversial comments were to be off-the-record as she was making them. Tucker Carlson, a conservative news presenter for MSNBC, attacked the decision to publish the quotes saying “journalistic practices in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower [sic] than they are here” and that “in
IN BRIEF
SAMANTHA POWER Born in Ireland in 1970, Samantha Power is a fearsomely intelligent Irish-American academic, author and journalist. She is a Professor at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government, a Pulitzer-prize winner for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and is an award winning journalist for her reports on Sudan, having written for such esteemed publications as Time, The Boston Globe and The New Republic. Ms Power, described by Men’s Vogue as someone who “can change minds and might one day reshape relations among nations,” and by George Clooney as the best basketball player “I’ve ever played against,” has worked for Barack Obama since 2005 as an unpaid foreign policy advisor.
Was The Scotsman right to print? Evan Beswick gives his view » 20
America, when someone requests an off-the-record remark, the journalist usually grants it to them.” Mark Feldstein, a journalism academic at the George Washington University told the Washington Post that the rules on off-the-record comments were “a little murky. I teach my students that it has to be said in advance, but this was so immediately after that I wouldn't have run it. I think it was a low blow. I suspect most US mainstream publications would not have run it.” The Scotsman’s editor, Mike Gilson, defended the decision, saying: “We are certain it was right to publish. "I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on-therecord quotes after they have been made. The interview our political correspondent Gerri Peev conducted with Ms Power was clearly on an on-therecord basis. “She was clearly passionate and angry with the tactics of the Clinton camp over the Ohio primary, and that spilled over in the interview. Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest. “It was for others to judge whether the remarks were ill-judged or spoke of the inexperience in the Obama camp."