OPINION – No fingerprints, please – and that’s off the record (or is it on background?)

IFR 2548 - 24 Aug 2024 - 30 Aug 2024
8 min read
Jezz Farr

Jezz Farr

Having a 100% safe meeting with a journalist is a pipe dream for a banking comms person. It can’t happen. There is always a risk that something said might lead to an unexpected headline. It might not be today, tomorrow or next week. It might not be related to the banker in the meeting. It might even be positive.

But there are ways to reduce the chance of an inadvertent story. We call them ground rules. None are watertight but they can help. Having a meeting “off the record” is one. “Background only” is another. I often employ both, plus a third – “no fingerprints, please”. Paranoid, perhaps, but such is the misunderstanding of these various phrases I am always going to play safe, particularly when hosting a meeting between a senior banker and senior journalist where discussion of sensitive subjects is likely.

There is also a fourth safety tactic, employed when a story might come from a meeting despite the caveats above. This usually happens when both parties agree, mid-meeting, to ringfence a particular topic, allowing it to be considered as a potential story. In this case, I ask for a “check quotes” agreement, where a journo agrees to run past me any quotes attributed to my banker colleague ahead of publication. This is a bit of an ask these days. Most journalists don’t like the idea, plus it is time-consuming. If need be, I try to have quotes either checked during or at the end of the meeting, or within 24 hours. And only then to correct factual errors, not to change the gist of the story (well, sort of).

I am simplifying here a bit. Many meetings between bankers and the media veer between “off the record” and “on the record”, with the occasional “that’s for background only” thrown in.

Blurry

I have my own interpretation of these blurry phrases. Feel free to disagree but this approach has worked for me. The first one is easy. “On the record” means anything and everything is fair game for the media. Comments made can be quoted and attributed freely in pretty much any story and, unless there is a specific agreement otherwise, there is no obligation to refer back to the bank or its PR team. A bank’s quarterly results media call is a typical “on the record” moment.

A one-on-one “on the record” meeting is a little more manageable, in that a banker might go “off the record” momentarily to explain, for example, a sensitive point. But this “off the record” moment needs to be flagged. And in return for the overall “on the record” approach, a journo may agree to a “check quotes”. But let’s be clear, this is a favour and often a reflection of a good relationship between the PR and the journalist.

“Off the record” is trickier. I take it as meaning any information a banker provides in an interview can be used in a story but cannot be attributed to that banker. The story can be written but it isn’t immediately obvious where it came from (in theory).

Some people think “off the record” implies nothing will be written. That’s not my take. I would argue “background only” is the right description in that case, in that the information is given more to educate a journo or deepen their understanding of an issue. It is not to be used in or for a story per se but can be useful when journos find themselves writing about the subject later.

The danger here is that an enterprising journalist might take a snippet of useful info and run it by another source to gauge its newsworthiness or credibility. If an appropriate response is received, the journalist may then argue that they got the story separately to the initial “background only” meeting and that it is now in play.

I have been in the ludicrous situation where a journo calls for an official comment on a story they heard in a “background only” meeting where I was present with a senior banker. The journo has corroborated the story with a third party which has shifted the dynamic of the story to an “off the record” one that was further researched by the journo with other sources to the point where the journo was confident enough to write something. Hence the call for an official line from the bank. Crazy.

No fingerprints

You can understand therefore why some, like me, try on occasion to wrap ourselves in as many caveats as possible. “No fingerprints please” is the final card one can play. This means any information given is not only “off the record” (ie, non-attributable), it is also “background only” (not be used in a standalone story but to help provide context) with an additional layer of “no fingerprints” protection.

This implies that if a journo were to use any of the information that was given to provide context (background only), that information could not be used in any way that might identify the source or the source’s employer. This is more explicit than the non-attribution afforded by “off the record”.

So you can also understand how easy it can be for colleagues in the same company to interpret these nuances in different ways.

It can be particularly confusing when operating in different jurisdictions. At one international trading platform, the comms team in the UK thought they were speaking the same PR code – off record, on record, background, et cetera – as their colleagues in the US. It turns out they weren’t. They had had differing definitions for years. Which would explain why journalists on both sides of the pond felt they had been led a merry dance when they were assailed with yells of indignation from either the trading platform’s US-based PRs (when some info, without attribution, was used in a story) or its UK PRs (when no story appeared at all).

Given the potential for confusion, one thing is vital: agree at the beginning of any interview exactly what the ground rules are.

Of course, banks have PR specialists who properly understand how ground rules work and how to negotiate them. Which is why, my banker friends, you should always ask for one to chaperone you when you meet a journalist. They are there as much for your protection as for the bank’s.

Also, don’t forget that not all questions need to be answered. If you really, truly don’t want to see something in print, just don’t say it.

And what, you ask, do I think of bankers who think themselves above such petty PR practices, who think they can manage this themselves, who go solo? If I were to tell you, it would be off the record, on background only, with no fingerprints!

Jezz Farr has been a senior communications adviser to major international banks for more than 25 years