Dude, that's just not cool

In Brian Stelter's widely-circulated NYT piece this morning reporting criticisms of CNN’s Iran coverage as weak, there's this quote from an unnamed person at CNN -- attributed, oddly, just to CNN, as though an institution can speak with one voice:CNN said, “We share people’s expectations of CNN and have delivered far more coverage of the Iranian election and aftermath than any other network.”Shortly after the story appeared online, Jay Rosen, a frequent Twitterer who teaches at NYU's journalism school, twittered the anonymous CNN quote. In response, Stelter revealed that he had spoken -- "off the record" -- with Jonathan Klein, who oversees the CNN news department as president of CNN/US, after the story appeared online.Here's Stelter's tweet:@jayrosen_nyu FYI, Jon Klein did not respond to me until after the #CNNfail story appeared online. He labeled his response off the record.Now, we know that Stelter is just 23 years old, with less than two years' experience at a professional newspaper. But he should still understand the rules. When a source asks to be kept off the record, that means it's wrong to identify him publicly -- and that Twitter is a public forum, not a private discussion group.Stelter has 9,960 followers on Twitter, so anything he tweets counts as public disclosure. He should know better than to bust an arrangement with a confidential source in front of thousands of people he doesn't know.That said, the editor of Stelter's story also bears some responsibility for allowing the quote to land in the print edition with no attribution except the odd, "CNN said..." The story had considerable importance to the media community, obsessed as it was with the coverage of the weekend's top story.If Klein didn't say it, who did? The quote in the story must have come from someone else within the CNN organization aside from Klein, but with what authority or knowledge? The attribution can't possibly measure up to the NYT's journalism standards. Companies don't speak; people do. The reader needs to know who's speaking on CNN's behalf.Even more important, Stelter ought to respect the right of sources to talk to him off the record without the expectation that they'll be busted on Twitter within hours of hanging up the phone.One Twitterer has suggested a "grey area" that would allow Stelter to report on having had an off-the-record conversation with Klein, while not divulging its contents. But we see no grey area about confidentiality, and the rules should be no less stringent on this point. It's not the intention of a confidential source to have his/her identity as a source revealed on Twitter, or anywhere else, even if not quoted. That's the rule-break to which our headline refers.In any case, we have emailed Stelter for his comment/explanation, and will report it as soon as he responds.