DEFEDE /Tape sticks to the truth

Manning Pynn
Public Editor
Orlando Sentinel

Anyone who has tried to write down information while someone is talking -- particularly talking quickly or not in complete sentences -- knows that getting it right can be tricky.

Reporters, who do that all the time, devise their own methods to ensure accuracy: learning shorthand, inventing their own shorthand -- or, the most accurate of all, tape-recording the conversation.

If they tape-record telephone conversations, though, they can bump into a law -- in Florida and a handful of other states, at least -- that requires getting permission to do so from the people with whom they're speaking.

That became an issue this past week when the Miami Herald fired columnist Jim DeFede. The journalist had tape-recorded a telephone conversation Wednesday with former Miami Commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr., who that evening shot himself to death in the newspaper's lobby.

Teele, who had been indicted two weeks earlier on 26 federal counts of fraud and money laundering, had been the subject that day of an extensive article about allegations against him in another publication, the Miami New Times.

After the shooting, DeFede told his editors at the Herald of his conversation with the politician and acknowledged having neglected to get permission to record it, as well as having continued to tape when a distraught Teele went off the record. "In a tense situation," he explained in a statement, "I made a mistake."

Publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler reacted late that evening by dismissing the columnist, saying that what he had done was unethical and potentially illegal.

Why, though, should it be either?

When someone speaks with a reporter, there is no secret about what is going on. The journalist is gathering information and recording -- in one form or another -- what is said. The objective, for both parties, should be accuracy.

Even when someone wants to say something off the record, reporters often continue recording what is said -- either by writing it down or taping it. "Off the record" means that the information is not to be published, not that it can't be recorded.

In person, reporters sometimes ask interviewees if they mind being tape-recorded. They do that not because of any legal requirement but rather as a courtesy. Tape recorders make some people more nervous than just having their words written down. For them, bringing out a tape recorder or calling attention to it can reduce candor and lead to a stilted conversation.

If the conversation is on the telephone in Florida, though, it can become a legal issue because of a statute prohibiting the "interception . . . of wire, oral, or electronic communication." Plowing through the standard legalese, you'll find language that seems pretty clearly intended to rein in the practice of third parties tapping into other people's phone conversations without their knowledge.

It's broad enough, though, to include your own conversations.

You're perfectly free to write down, verbatim, every word spoken on the phone without alerting anyone. If you tape-record it, though, you can run afoul of the law if you don't get permission from the other party.

That strikes me as absurd, particularly when one of the parties to that conversation is a reporter, whose very purpose -- and both parties know it -- is to record accurately what is being said.