One of the trickiest dances in any form of media is what is “on the record” (full quotation with attribution), “on background” (quotation, no attribution by name, possible approximate description of the source), “on deep background” (quotation, but zero description), or “off the record” (theoretically information not supposed to be used at all, but agreements there vary). And one of the more interesting discussions there recently came with the start of the Gregg Berhalter – Gio Reyna (and his parents, Claudio and Danielle Reyna) U.S. men’s national team saga this December, which all started with some Berhalter comments at a Dec. 6 HOW Institute For Society Summit on Moral Leadership. Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports has many more details on how that came to be in a new piece:
The inside story of why Gregg Berhalter went to *that* leadership summit, how his fateful comments got published, and how the ensuing mess might’ve cost him his USMNT job:https://t.co/Ox3UQ1mGcP
— Henry Bushnell (@HenryBushnell) April 13, 2023
A few of the many notable details in there are that this summit invitation for Berhalter (seen above at a Nov. 24 press conference in Qatar) came about thanks to his longstanding relationship with HOW Institute for Society founder and chairman Dov Seidman, that he’d originally planned to participate virtually in between the USMNT’s group stage and Round of 16 games, and that he only wound up there in person in New York thanks to a combination of the team’s early exit and initial illness that prevented his planned exit flight to his home in Chicago. But, for our purposes, what really stands out here is the discussion of how Berhalter thought his remarks would be only for the select in-person audience here, but how a PR affiliate wound up telling an attending journalist they were on the record:
However, the previous day, with Berhalter now confirmed as an in-person attendee, a third-party publicist representing the HOW Institute had emailed another attendee, Kevin Delaney, the CEO and editor-in-chief of Charter, in part to advertise Berhalter’s appearance as a “news hook” and his session as “open press.” Delaney audio-recorded it with his phone, and sent a follow-up email shortly afterward: “The Greg Berhalter interview was on the record, right?” To which the publicist responded: “Yes, Greg’s interview is on the record.”
Berhalter, unaware of the apparent breakdown in communication — Seidman and the HOW Institute declined to comment on how, exactly, it occurred — spoke with his host for 12 minutes about a range of topics that jibed with the summit’s broader agenda. In Minute 13, Seidman called on a former NFL coach in the audience to contribute to the discussion. In Minute 19, Seidman said, “so, we are out of time for this session,” but he went to one more sports executive in the audience for a comment anyway. The executive asked Berhalter about “challenges to your moral leadership.” “Wow,” Berhalter said as his weary brain spun in search of insight. “That’s a great question.”
And that’s when he launched into the story that eventually spread like wildfire, the one he felt was a “shining example of team culture,” of using “values as a filter” to confront challenges. Seidman felt it was an “inspiring” one, and that Berhalter “spoke gracefully and respectfully.”
This is, of course, far from the first case of something unintended for public consumption winding up there anyways. The history of hot mic comments in particular exemplifies that. But the Berhalter situation stands out a bit beyond that, with it seemingly setting up as a fully off-the-record event (although, few of those have remained completely that way in the long run), only for that to be derailed by a publicist. And that led to quite the drama between Gio Reyna’s parents and Berhalter, and to an investigation, and to ongoing uncertainty on if Berhalter will be back for the next World Cup cycle. And it’s fascinating to hear more on the variety of odd circumstances that led to this.
[Yahoo Sports; photo from Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports]
