Republican-American state house reporter Paul Hughes defended every Connecticut resident last week by standing up to an unfortunate request from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Before about 11 reporters and a couple of interns, a group that had gathered for what was supposed to be a budget briefing, the governor announced that everything he said would be “off the record,” or the journalism term for “for your information only, but not for publication, broadcast or attribution.”
Malloy tossed this condition out there after answering questions about the $40.3 billion budget on the record for about 30 minutes.
Hughes protested. The state’s chief executive cannot decide to take a conversation about the budget off the record, especially after already answering questions for a half-hour, he said. Reporters do sometimes agree to go off the record, but never mid-interview, rarely with a governor, and certainly not about a budget paid for with taxpayer dollars.
Malloy told reporter Hughes: If you don’t like it, leave.
And so he did.
Hughes didn’t get very far when he heard someone call for him to wait up. [Read More]