I’ve received, in as many days, two unsolicited emails from the same Tier 1 Republican campaign beginning with an announcement that they were Off the Record and then proceeding to cast aspersions on the same Tier 2 Republican candidate, presuming in hopes that I would publish said rumors without sourcing the campaign.
While my rudimentary understanding of journalistic ethics is that I’m not bound to rules of attribution unless I’ve agreed to them, my own site policies, written with emails written by private individuals in mind, states that, “The content of these messages, including the identity of the sender, is presumed for publication unless otherwise requested.”
I’ll give thoughts to a carve-out in the site policies for campaigns and other organizational contacts. In the meantime, let me just state for the record that I find these attempts by campaigns to plant smears reprehensible.
