In this day of YouTube, Twitter, Flip and Cell Videos, nothing is "off the record". Just ask Terry Moran of ABC TV who sent a tweet that he should not have sent. In reality, off the record is "off the table".
There is an issue of discretion... which has been said to be the better part of valor. Perhaps our increasingly less civil, ill-mannered society has lost its collective ability to discern. It goes back to something I've written in What Do I Say Next? and Face to Face: How To Reclaim the Personal Touch in a Digital World: "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should."
I almost made this mistake this weekend in my enthusiasm for "sharing" via twitter. At a family gathering, I was privy to a very interesting conversation about some of the entertainment world's backstage "secrets". It was so fascinating that I said aloud, "Wow, I'm going to tweet this!" The three guys all looked at me rather surprised (and not too happy) and one of them said, "Susan, you can't do this. We've been talking about is our industry and this is not for the public." Then I remembered my own tenet: Just because I could tweet it, doesn't mean I should. So I didn't.
Those of us who tweet, record and post (whether it's for a major news organization or our own tweets) need to re-think and recapture discretion. The downside is that people who include an "outsider" in a conversation might also re-think doing so. That would be a great loss.
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