system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do people trust journalists when they say off the record? What's stopping the journalists from printing what they talked about?
gpt
Nothing is stopping them from printing such things, except the potential damage to their reputation. A journalist that gets a reputation for always printing stuff that was said 'off the record', will find it very hard to get people to agree to do interview with them / tell them anything else off the record. And when interviewing people is your livelihood, that is not a good reputation to have.