Is it all on-the-record?

October 4, 2009

A few years ago I was quoted in a newspaper article that painted an inaccurate picture. As a professional journalist and a graduate of one of the region’s premier journalism schools, I should have been fully aware of how my words could have been used. Ironically, I wasn’t.

Surviving and learning from that incident has made me more empathetic to my subjects and ultimately a better reporter. What it hasn’t done is diminished my belief that if you’re out in public, whatever you say or do can be recorded.

I made this clear this spring when I recorded some people in a coffee shop. They were loudly discussing whether the Internet was a fad and how useless cell phones and other technology was.

Readers and listeners protested a bit over my actions, so here’s installment number two.

Following here are some photos I took while on the streets of Paris and at Oktoberfest in Munich. It was Fashion Week and I wanted to see if regular people were concerned about their fashion as much as the runway models in NYC. It was also the biggest drinking and dress-up time of the year in Germany.

Seems that nobody cared about fashion.

As you can guess, these photos were NOT taken with any releases or disclaimers.

So was any of this wrong? What do you think of people being online and on stage all the time in our new digital age?

What would you change?

Leave your comments. Thanks.

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