Anonymous Canadian journalist Fine Young Journalist writes about the delicate relationship that exists between a reporter and a source.
Whether it is stated or not, a reporter expects the source to protect their conversations from competing journalists until the story has broken. FYJ quotes a source who was asked by a reporter not to blog about their interview until the item was published.
With more and more sources likely to be contributing to a blog these days, this sort of agreement will become more common. When a blogger includes a disclaimer in their e-mails that anything sent to them might appear in the blog, they may feel they are off the hook. But scooping a reporter in your blog will have an effect on your credibility as a source.
Says FYJ: "As a reporter, I'd never expect a source to talk to me alone. But sophisticated sources, the kind who are likely to deal with more than one reporter in a day, know that they're not supposed to go sharing details of interviews they've just done with the next reporter through the door. Sometimes I bet that totally kills them, but it's the only way it's going to work."
It's complicated. As FYJ says, the reporter's continued employment depends on their ability to find news and deliver it before, or at least at the same time as, the competition. If you get known for betraying the confidence of one reporter, your reputation is toast, or at least burned around the edges.
FYJ discusses the reporter's side of the relationship in a follow-up comment:
"The way I see it, an interview is conducted according to certain ground
rules that I think constitute a contract. You make it clear, when you
start, that you're on the record -- including which record
you're talking about, too. If you go off the record, you both have to
agree first, and so on. The idea that it's a contract is necessary for
my idea that both the source and the reporter have some
intellectual-property rights in the content of the interview itself.
"We
don't generally explain every detail of the implied agreement in an
interview, if only because having that conversation would be too
unwieldy to have every time. But then, we also give "unsophisticated"
sources, those who might not share our understanding of the implied
contract, the benefit of every doubt if there's any confusion.
"You
tell your source where the story is to appear in part so that he or she
understands what kind of organization will be standing behind the
story. If it's the Montreal Gazette, the source knows there's a pretty
major institution that will have a strong interest in making sure the
story is done competently. If it's a punk 'zine, they'll have a
different understanding of the editorial vetting your work will receive
before it goes public. And if it's a blog, they'll know there'll be no
editing at all and -- if you're an unknown -- not necessarily a lot of
accountability, either.
"The source should have the chance to make an informed decision."
Some bloggers seem to think that posting an item once a year about
their privacy policy is the equivalent of giving notice to anyone they
may talk to or correspond with in the future that those interactions
could be posted on their blog. Their responsibility to the people they
deal with goes far beyond that.
Your integrity (or lack thereof) follows you across publishing platforms and media. Betrayals of confidence aren't excusable just because you're doing them on a blog.
I've certainly seen some definitions that were flawed, but I still find Wikipedia easy to use and easy to link to. 
In a recent crusade, PR blogger 
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