To Tape or Not to Tape?

This morning on The Diane Rehm Show, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the lead foreign policy advisor during the Carter administration, questioned the accuracy of quotes from Bob Woodward's new book on the recent surge in Iraq, The War Within. He told Rehm that if Woodward's conversations hadn't been taped, any assertions that the quotes from those conversations are accurate should be called into question. I'm sure most journalists have faced these types of questions at one point or another. It reminds me of a story I read in The New York Observer a couple of years ago. Tape It, Baby, Tape It! tells how some writers, particularly magazine writers, think their note-taking skills are superior to tape recorders. Let me say flat-out that it's impossible to take better notes than a tape recorder. Impossible.

With that said, what were you taught about taping conversations during your college years? What are you being taught if you're still in school? Are there any daily reporters out there who tape? Non-daily folks, are there any instances where you wouldn't tape an interview? Memory, by nature, is faulty. What do you do to insulate yourself from claims of quote inaccuracy?