On-and-off-the-record

I was amused recently to see that after US President Obama made a kind-of offensive comment about a boring pop nonentity, it was American ABC news management that ended up apologising. Why? Well, apparently, they had published a comment that had been meant to be: 'off-the-record'. 

It all makes you wonder, though. Is it off-the-record to put on-the-record that an off-the-record comment was off-the-record? Isn't it just possible that the Presidential persona who made the off-the-record comment, and who wanted the off-the-record comment to remain off-the-record, meant it to go on-the-record in the first place? And just why should the media care if his Presidential feelings were hurt anyway?