TerryMoran: Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’s presidential.

As reported in Politico, the above was tweeted on Twitter by ABC reporter Terry Moran who heard the comment from an off-the-record portion of a CNBC interview with the president.

The tweet was deleted later and ABC quickly apologized to the White House and to CNBC. For further background, it was a CNBC crew which interviewed the president and provided the audio and video to a reporters’ pool. Under no circumstances would CNBC have ever been obligated to make an off-the-record promise on behalf of the media pool.

I don’t think Moran broke protocol and the slip is hardly as consequential as some commentators have made it out to be. It wasn’t news that Kanye West, once again, acted like an ass and the President’s remark echoed what was the sentiment of the day. As some have mentioned, it was barely worth the 140-character announcement.

There is nothing statutory about the off-the-record agreement. However, there are some significant ethical considerations that underscore the value of this practice.

As a university spokesperson, I understood and respected the value and the impact of going off the record with a reporter. Especially in preparing university administrators, faculty members, and other school staffers (most notably campus police) for media interviews, I would remind them that anything they said to a reporter was fair game but they could go off the record if there was a clear understanding as to its use. Not surprisingly, I found many university staffers had no idea about the proper uses of going off the record. Many, I recall, were surprised to hear that reporters would rather go to jail than break an off-the-record agreement that protected an essential information source in stories of major public importance and impact.

Now back to the president and undoubtedly the more central question to this little incident: Does going off the record apply to the president? Just days before Super Tuesday in the 2008 presidential primary, Obama, whose presidential bid was just beginning to gather the momentum to offset Clinton’s campaign, quickly discovered he was no longer free to invoke the off-the-record card. On his campaign plane, he chatted informally with some press pool members about sports and then the questions turned to the Super Tuesday primaries. As soon as he saw the recording switches activated, he asked for off-the-record consideration but Jeff Zeleny, a New York Times reporter, told Obama he couldn’t do that and the press pool interview was cut short.

Understandably, reporters were not there to have private informal chats with presidential candidates. However, not all reporters agreed with Zeleny’s protest, thinking the candidate should be allowed to go off the record.

Frankly, there are few reporters with the breadth and depth of investigative journalistic skills who would know how to negotiate the possible story in which a president speaking off the record would be the effective way of moving a story into the public interest.

What was involved in this specific incident had nothing to do with going off the record. Before an interview, most reporters will engage in small talk with the interviewee about things not connected to the topic being explored. The icebreaker eases the tension and often helps to improve the quality of the interview. However, once the subject moves beyond the Sunday football game or the podium antics of a still-immature music star, then the president, most especially, does not have the privilege of going off the record.

Moran was fine about tweeting the President’s casual remark. No harm or foul.