FIRST OFF . . .

Rob Lowe, once facing possible charges for allegedly videotaping a 16-year-old girl performing a sex act last year, says he could be “the poster boy for bad judgment” but that his ethical code hasn’t changed. “No, because there was never anything wrong with my ethics,” said Lowe, interviewed in Los Angeles by correspondent Jim Brown for a segment to air Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” show. It was one of the young actor’s first interviews on the much-publicized taping incident in an Atlanta hotel during last summer’s Democratic National Convention. He previously had declined to comment on the matter. In a settlement worked out last month with Atlanta authorities, Lowe, to avoid a possible criminal charge of sexual exploitation of a minor, agreed to work for 20 hours with disadvantaged youths in Los Angeles. A transcript of the interview, made on the set of his new movie “Bad Influence,” was made available Monday by NBC. In the segment, Lowe didn’t directly refer to the taping incident, saying only that “I’m a man and I stand up to the mistakes I made. That’s part of what being a man is. I made a mistake. “Thing is,” he added, “I knew it immediately after making the mistake.” He referred, although not specifically, to a civil suit still pending against him in Atlanta filed by the mother of the teen-ager in the alleged taping, claiming that Lowe seduced her daughter. The actor also was asked about stories claiming that after the Atlanta incident he destroyed a videotape library of what correspondent Brown called, without elaboration, “previous encounters.” “That definitely is a falsehood,” Lowe said. “I mean, I’ve read it all. I’ve read that I had raids on my house. I’ve truly heard it all and . . . I tell you something: It hurts me and it hurts my family, and these innuendoes are just no fun. No fun.”