That incident had prompted Carroll to advise the staff in writing to be up front with all sources and generally not to tape interviews without people's knowledge. But the basketball story presented some unusual problems. We didn't want to be faced later with a flood of lawsuits from players who came under pressure to recant. And tapes would protect us by providing indisputable evidence of what had been said. The key point was that people would know they were talking to us on the record and were expecting to be quoted.
Tapes are merely a more complete form of notes.
However, if any source asked whether he or she was being taped, the reporters would have to tell the truth. Mike and Jeff started working the phones. Then, during the writing process, we discovered some added benefits of taping. We had a much richer than usual selection of quotes and the tapes enabled perfectly accurate transcriptions. To backstop the reporters, I double-checked accuracy and context by listening to every tape on which a player made an allegation of wrongdoing that we intended to publish.