If you are powerful and use a privileged access agreement (background, deep background, off the record) to mislead or to lie, the journalist should not be under any obligation to keep their side of their agreement, absent extraordinary circumstances.
— Marc Ambinder (@marcambinder) November 28, 2017
Ambinder is correct, but when does this happen? I mean, it never happens. It really *never happens*. It's one of my pet peeves so I pay attention. Years ago back when I was a young and beautiful blogger a journalist made the claim to me that sources don't lie because if they did journalists would burn them. I don't claim to have a a perfect memory, but how often have journalists burned sources over lies? Hilariously the only one I remember is Howie Kurtz burning Ann Coulter.