How to Brief a Reporter on Background Without Becoming the Story.

On background means the reporter can use the information but not your name. Off the record means they cannot use it at all. Deep background means they can use it with no attribution of any kind. The terms are agreed before you say anything, not after, and the reporter has to agree, not just hear you. Inside those rules, a background briefing is the single most useful thing a plaintiff side can do before a filing. Outside them, it becomes the story.

Say the terms first, every time

I say which it is before I say anything else, and I wait for the reporter to agree. If they do not, the briefing does not happen. Reporters respect this and expect it. What they do not forgive is a source who says something, then tries to take it off the record afterward. There is no afterward.

What a background briefing is for

Giving a reporter the full record early enough to read it all and get it right. Before the Johns Hopkins complaint was filed, I briefed reporters on background, under embargo, so they had the record in hand ahead of time, and thorough stories ran the day the firm filed. The point was not to shape what they wrote. It was to make sure that what they wrote was built on documents, with the hours to understand them, instead of on two statements traded on deadline.

What stays inside the rules

Only what counsel has approved, in writing; a text is enough. Only what is public or producible without restriction, and nothing under a protective order. Nothing about a witness’s credibility, expected testimony or evidence that may not come in; the trial publicity rule reaches a background briefing exactly as it reaches a press conference. And nothing that would read as calculated if it surfaced, because sequencing is where the risk lives, not the material.

How it becomes the story

When the source is more interesting than the record. When the timing looks engineered. When a reporter who agreed to background finds the same material on the record somewhere else and feels used. The way to never be the story is to give the reporter less than they want and all of what they need, and to be reachable when they call back before deadline. When discovery can go to a reporter → When a reporter calls →