I should maybe have been clearer. When talking to a random journalist you don’t know, I think it’s pretty obvious that you should confirm whether you’re on the record or not. I was more trying to address the concern about whether things are newsworthy when talking to friends who also happen to be journalists. Journalists have beats, and most journalists are not currently working any stories for which comments from random EAs are newsworthy. A few journalists are! And if you happen to be talking to those ones, then, yeah, exercise more caution.
I dunno I think people are just really overestimating the likelihood of getting “caught on the record” as a random EA. It’s hard to explain precisely why, but, if any EA who is totally unconnected to current events ends up with their words being published against their expectations I will be very surprised. Happy to bet against it happening at 4:1 odds (for relatively small amounts as it’s a bit hard to make the criteria ungameable).
I should maybe have been clearer. When talking to a random journalist you don’t know, I think it’s pretty obvious that you should confirm whether you’re on the record or not. I was more trying to address the concern about whether things are newsworthy when talking to friends who also happen to be journalists. Journalists have beats, and most journalists are not currently working any stories for which comments from random EAs are newsworthy. A few journalists are! And if you happen to be talking to those ones, then, yeah, exercise more caution.
I dunno I think people are just really overestimating the likelihood of getting “caught on the record” as a random EA. It’s hard to explain precisely why, but, if any EA who is totally unconnected to current events ends up with their words being published against their expectations I will be very surprised. Happy to bet against it happening at 4:1 odds (for relatively small amounts as it’s a bit hard to make the criteria ungameable).