Likelihood of Success

Through a glass, darkly

Feb 14, 2009 Medialites, Politics and Poker

Instapundit:

TRANSPARENCY: An “Off-the-Record speech” at the National Press Club? It’s a tribute to Dr. Strangelove: “You can’t do reporting here! This is the press club!”

Well, I followed the link and I was pretty confused.  Isn’t the National Press Club’s most famous event — the Gridiron Dinner — famously “off the record,” at least “on the record”? ["Reporting" fail!  Ironic, yeah.  See comments. -- RDC]  What’s the big deal here?  I eventually figured it out, though, and the below is a comment I left at the linked-to story at the Knoxville News Sentinel.

I wish the blog reporting on this issue were a little more clear here, actually. Lots of events involving reporters and people involved in media are off the record, including events of the National Press Club. So the way this was reported, and the comments here, don’t really add up. There’s nothing inherently offensive about that; in fact, a lot of good can come from people being able to talk off the record from time to time.

This really is a story, however, and it really is a problem — although you wouldn’t know it to read this item, or Instapundit’s. Here’s an excerpt from Donna Leinwand letter that, first, sets up the procedural issue:

As you know, the National Press Club is hosting but not sponsoring this event. Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies is renting a room at the Club for the conference. As such, it is the prerogative of Georgetown, Mr. Plouffe and your bureau to impose whatever ground rules you prefer for his remarks.

Right. It’s their ball. She goes on in her letter to complain, along the lines of commenters here, about the hypocrisy, etc., which is all well and good. It’s true, but it’s dog bites man, you know? But to my mind, the pointy edge of this story is this:

Plouffe, who has been on the speaking circuit promoting his forthcoming book, “The Audacity to Win”, was the keynote speaker on Thursday at a public policy luncheon sponsored by Georgetown University and Politico. Every event at the two-day program had been promoted as open to media coverage, but Georgetown on Wednesday told media representatives that Plouffe’s speech would be off the record.

Both quotes are from here.

Now you can understand the problem. It was a bait and switch whereby not only attendees but even sponsors were told, a day before the speech and after people had taken the trouble to set up the event, promote it, get access to it, travel to it, etc., that no less than the keynote speaker himself was changing the ground rules. That’s dirty pool, and that is what elevates this story from more media- enabled media-evasion (for is this administration not to be a replay of Camelot, without of course the unhappy ending?) to a particularly cynical and nasty show of arrogance.