COM 209: Good 'color story' on Obama

It's been a while since it ran, but the online edition of The American Prospect had an excellent example of a "color story," which I define as a story that uses description and quotes to convey what it's like to be there at an event. Plus it's about Sen. Barack Obama's presidential announcement, an event many of you wrote up in February. So you'll be able to make comparisons. It's by Phoebe Connelly, editor of In These Times, a politically liberal magazine.

Notice how she combines description and quotation in a downtown Springfield bar:

At the Alamo II, a bar near the corner of 5th and Washington, Mike McCarthy ducked inside with his 11-year-old son, Will, to use the restroom and warm up. "I'm looking for leadership at the presidential and congressional level that is looking beyond the sound bite, beyond the next political poll," he said. McCarthy is a member of the Marine Reserves who served a tour in Iraq during the initial invasion in 2003. He usually votes Republican, but Obama's buzz has him considering voting Democratic. One of his concerns is the way the Iraq war is being handled, but he doesn't think leaving now is the answer. Most Americans, he feels, don't give enough thought to the complexity of developing a working democracy. "We've got a culture that's very short-sighted, many people have already put 9/11 behind them."

McCarthy was one of many out that morning who invoked the idea of being a part of history. "Will and I will look back and say, 'Hey, remember the time we went to Springfield and saw Senator Obama?'"

The bar was serving hot coffee for $2, but many customers opted for something stronger. Three young men, who'd decided a pitcher of beer was their best chance of staving off the cold, sat in the window. They were all seniors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I've never gone to a political rally before," said Kyle Mullen, "none of us have. It's the first time, and it's specifically because of him. Black people, white people -- everyone is a fan of him."

Better yet, read her in the original. Follow the link above.

COM 150: Discussion question, TV and reality

Here's the question: How does TV affect reality affect TV affect reality affect TV ...

And so on ad infinitum.

A couple of links:

Neil Postman, a media critic who taught at New York University, had this to say about the segue or transition, "Now ... this," that you hear so much on the TV news. Follow the links and see if what he said is true, and if it's true of the Internet too.

Here's a webpage with links about Postman's writing. Surf around and see what you learn. He died a couple of years ago, but he had a lot to say about TV, media, technology and how they combine to reflect the world we live in.

So ... to get back to the question ... how does TV affect our reality and how does reality affect TV? And vice versa.

COMM 317: Libel and New York Times v. Sullivan

Some links for tonight's class discussion ...

As you read the AP stylebook's discussion of media law, you'll notice most of it is about libel. Why? Probably because it's the point of law we're most likely to get in trouble with.

Here's some stuff to read, and a question for discussion.

On libel in general. We'll start by flipping through a self-paced tutorial on libel by Dorothy Bowles of the College of Communication, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I would like this one even if I weren't a UTK alumnus who got his first byline in The UT Daily Beacon. Some of you have seen it before (in COMM 207 last semester). It will be a good review. Some of you haven't. It will be a good introduction.

A lot of the cases mentioned in Doctor Bowles' tutorial are from Tennessee (Well, why not? UTK is in Tennessee.) In Illinois, the law is similar. Here's what Hall Adams LCC, a Chicago law firm, says about what you have to prove to sue somebody for defamation -- which, for our purposes, is the same as libel -- in Illinois. Of course, we would turn it around -- we'd take it as what we'd better not do if we don't want to get sued for defamation!

On Times v. Sullivan. This court case isn't as much fun to read as the one about Jerry Falwell and the outhouse, but it set the basic standard for libel -- i.e. the "actual malice" test. Here's Justice Walter Brennan's opinion for the court. What does "actual malice" mean? Here's what Justice Brennan said: It is publication of something "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." So these are the words we still use, reckless disregard and actual malice. What they mean in individual cases will depend on the facts of the case.

Practice for final. You're the editor of The Daily Democrat Republican, a newspaper in a city not at all like Springfield. With the filing period for city elections coming up, you get an announcement from the Rev. J. Worthington Herringbone III, who is running for school board in the 7th School Board District on a platform of cleaning up vice and immorality among the youth of today. He says the current members of the Board of Education have failed to keep sex, drugs and rock-and-roll out of the schools (Tweed is nothing if not a child of the '60s), and 7th District school board member Katherine ("Kitty") Katz never got over the permissive attitudes toward education of her youth when she was high on drugs in San Francisco during the "summer of love." Katz has acknowledged her past use of "a little spliff now and then," and has said at school board meetings she thinks it gives her a measure of empathy she would not otherwise have as a board member but has no bearing on the issues that come before the school board.

A week after Pastor Herringbone announces, you get some grainy pictures that show two men embracing in the back seat of a taxi. One cannot be identified, but the other bears a strong resemblance to the good pastor, at least to the extent a low-resolution JPEG can bear a strong resemblance to anyone or anything. You call Pastor Herringbone to ask him about the picture, and he hangs up on you as soon as you get the quesstion out. How much of this stuff can you safely print? Why (or why not)? How do you balance the public's right to know and the public figures' right to be treated fairly in this case?

If I went ahead and published the photo, and it turned out to be an ad agency model from New York or Chicago instead of Pastor Herringbone, would he be able to sue me for defamation? Consider each of the factors mentioned by Hall Adams LCC.

COM 150 -- No, read this YouTube post last

Standing procedure -- to get a thread in chronological order, read a blog from the bottom up, right? I thought I'd wrapped up the thread last night. Then there were more stories in today's papers. By the way, both of them could suggest good term paper topics that I wasn't thinking of when I wrote your assignment sheet on term papers last night.

Anyway, there were two stories in The Washington Post today on YouTube.

The first looks like a Business Section story on YouTube and its competition. It's by Sam Diaz. Here's the gist of it:

YouTube has suffered a one-two punch in the past two weeks.

First, Viacom asked for $1 billion in a lawsuit against YouTube, saying the video Web site failed to remove copyright-protected clips. And yesterday, some of the most powerful businesses in Hollywood and on the Internet joined forces to create an online video site of their own, taking some of the Web's most popular videos with them.

YouTube is at a critical juncture. Since it launched in December 2005, it has ridden a wave of popularity that led Google to buy it in a $1.65 billion deal last year. But now the site must figure out its relationship with major traditional media companies while also forging its business, which to date has relied on advertising posted alongside videos.

The partnership announced yesterday by NBC, News Corp., AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft creates a first-of-its-kind alternative to some of YouTube's most popular content: TV and movie clips and music videos that were often posted there without permission. Unlike YouTube, the new competitor -- which says it will launch its Web site this summer -- has proposed a wide offering of videos, borrowing the iTunes model of offering some files for free and others, in this case movies and TV shows, for a fee.

YouTube has already had copyright issues. Read about 'em in the Post's story. But it is essentially a networking site, and can probably survive on user-generated content. Home videos of aunts, uncles, grandchildren, ferrets and cats. Read about that angle, too. It's a good story.

The other one, by media critic Howard Kurtz and staff writer Jose Antonio Vargas, is about the Hillary Clinton mash-up. The headline says it all: "A Brave New World of Political Skulduggery?" Well, suggests it all would be more accurate. It's the subhead in the second deck that says it: "Anti-Clinton Video Shows Ease of Attack In the Computer Age."

Reaction from the agency, and spokesmen for the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns:

Thomas Gensemer, managing director of Blue State, a District [of Columbia]-based online strategy firm, said he fired de Vellis Wednesday night. "This is an unfortunate situation all around," he said. Gensemer said his firm has provided only technical assistance, not creative services, to the senator's campaign. Joe Rospars, Obama's new media director, is on leave from Blue State.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton declined to criticize the video. He said Blue State "handled it internally and we're satisfied with their response," adding: "We can't be held responsible for everything a supporter says and does. . . . We don't hold our opponents responsible for any of a number of negative YouTube ads up there about Senator Obama."

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, said he finds it "disappointing that we all believed this ad was made by an average citizen expressing himself or herself, and that turned out not to be the case." Asked if the Obama camp should disavow the video, Wolfson said: "That's their decision."

Strategy behind these quotes? Oh, yes, you bet. Blue State and Obama trying to minimize the story, and Clinton trying to milk it for all it's worth.

Quotes I like best are from a guy at another online consulting firm and from Arianna Huffington, readers of whose blog tracked down the Blue State guy who did the ad on his own time. They're at the end of the story. Introductory newswriting students will recognize the "kicker" or twist at the end:

"If I were a traditional media strategist, an old-school guy, I'd think, 'See, you can't trust these crazy kids,' " said Jonah Seiger, who heads the online strategy firm Connections Media. "If one of my employees did this, I'd be outraged. It would reflect badly on my company. It can't help but reflect badly on my client. . . . There's no question that this causes embarrassment to Obama."

The imbroglio highlighted not just how the power to push a message has shifted from big campaign organizations to lone operators with rudimentary video skills, but how technology makes subterfuge easier to accomplish -- and easier to detect.

"You can be as anonymous as you want on the Internet," Huffington said. "But the minute you create something powerful that has impact, people are going to find out who it is."

COM 150: Read this YouTube ad post last. But read it!

In an earlier post to this blog, I mentioned the Huffington Post (which is also known as HuffPost, apparently, or HuffPo), as the blog that outed the guy who did the Hillary Clinton mash-up comparing her to Big Brother. And I said I'd get back to you with more on HuffPost or HuffPo.

First, you need to know HuffPo is an interactive blog. It's headed by Arianna Huffington, a kind of leftish author and second-tier celebrity of San Francisco, and it features posts -- which read like newspaper or magazine columns -- by name authors as well as average citizens who are allowed to join the blog and write in. The blurb in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia says "the HuffPost draws a balance between hard news commentary and coverage, popular culture and celebrity opinion features. It is also known for the wide range of opinions expressed by members of the public who are encouraged to comment on the original articles." But most of the opinions are liberal or left-wing.

Today the creator of the YouTube ad, a San Francisco creative who worked for an ad agency retained by rival candidate Barack Obama, posted his confession to HuffPo. And Huffington had a column headed "Who Created "Hillary 1984"? Mystery Solved!" It told how readers of her blog solved the mystery:

For the last two weeks, the Internet has been buzzing about the hottest online mystery since lonelygirl15: who was behind the "Hillary 1984" video mashup?

Some suspected right wing SwiftBoaters. Some speculated it was the work of disaffected Democratic consultants. One blogger even pointed the finger at me.

As the intrigue deepened, the mainstream media joined the fray, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both being asked about the viral smash -- and much talk about the impact user-generated political videos will have on the 2008 race.


Well, today I can end the guessing. Last night, we sent out a challenge to the HuffPost team asking them to hit the phones and contact all their sources. As a result, we have learned the video was the work of Philip de Vellis, who was the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign, and who now works at Blue State Digital, a company created by members of Howard Dean's Internet Team.

Update: He doesn't work there any more. He either quit or got fired. Probably quit just before he got fired.

HuffPost, in my opinion, is a good example of what is sometimes called Web 2.0 because it is interactive. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about HuffPo:

... the HuffPost draws a balance between hard news commentary and coverage, popular culture and celebrity opinion features. It is also known for the wide range of opinions expressed by members of the public who are encouraged to comment on the original articles. The comment section is home to discussions on politics, religion, topical events, world affairs, cultural and social matters. It has an open format, and rarely does a commenter get banned for his or her views or even a verbal attack. Long, pointless, ad hominem, abusive and endlessly repetitious comments are the only sure way to be banned.

And here's how Wikipedia defines Web 2.0: "a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."

So Wikipedia, which relies on readers to submit articles and corrections to articles, is itself a prime example of Web 2.0, right? Cool.

Footnote on lonelygirl15. I had no idea what Arianna Huffington's reference to "lonelygirl15" was about other than a hunch it looked like a screenname, so I did what the old and the clueless so often do these days to get by, I did a keyword search in Google. And here, for my clueless brothers and sisters of all ages (if there are any), is what Wikipedia has to say about it: "lonelygirl15 is an interactive web-based video serial centering around the life of a fictional teenage girl named Bree, whose YouTube username is the eponymous "lonelygirl15". The series is presented through short, regularly-updated video blogs posted by the fictional characters, as well as through an optional alternate reality game." Interactive. More Web 2.0. And it takes something like Wikipedia to keep up with it. (You won't read about it in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, right? But you can on the Web. Way cool.

We're going to do more with Web 2.0, gatekeepers, Wikipedia and this whole phenomenon of user-generated content between now and finals.

COM 150: YouTube hit artist 'fesses up

The advertising creative who made an attack ad comparing Democratic presidential candiate Hillary Clinton to "Big Brother" in 1984 has been outed. He outed himself, but only when it was clear he was about to be outed by others. Characteristically, he confessed by posting an intem to the liberal political blog Huffington Post. There's a whole 'nother story on how the interactive blog, hosted by San Francisco political activist Arianana Huffington, challenged its readers to smoke out who was responsible for the YouTube ad. One of them did, and the perp posted an item to the Huffington Post confessing up.

(I'll post something about it to The 'Wrapper later today, as soon as I find out a little more about how Huffington's blog works. I think this Hillary Clinton ad is a minor political snit that will be forgotten in a few days, but what it demonstrates about the Inernet, and what's sometimes known as "Web 2.0," is important.)

Carla Marinucci of The San Francisco Chronicle, who has led the print media in birddogging the story (and in trying to figure out what it means for the use of new media in politics). Here's how Marinucci wrote it up:

The political whodunit of the presidential campaign season was solved Wednesday after a strategist with an Internet consulting firm -- which has ties to candidate Barack Obama -- stepped forward as creator of the controversial "1984"-style Internet ad that depicted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "Big Brother" figure.

Philip de Vellis, a strategist with Blue State Digital, the firm that designed Obama's Web site, acknowledged that he is "ParkRidge47,'' creator of the ad. De Vellis resigned from the firm after hearing he was about to be reported as the creator by the Huffington Post blog."

Marinucci's column in The Chronicle a couple of days ago suggested YouTube will be huge in the 2008 presidential race. That's partly because citizens, not to mention anonymous political operatives, can use it for attack ads without the accountability of disclaimers and responses from the other campaign. In other words, it makes possible an end run around the gatekeepers.

This morning Marinucci quotes Peter Leyden, head of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco think tank that deals with Internet and political issues, on some of these political implications:

"It's disappointing to hear that he's associated with a firm that is associated with Barack,'' [Leyden] said. But "it shows that someone who has a decent amount of talent and basic tools can do meaningful political video. If he did it on the side in his day job, then he's one of hundreds of thousands who could do the same.''

We'll see, we'll see. I agree when he suggests the ad is damaging to Obama's campaign, and it hurts Blue State Digital's image, even more. It suggests a lack of message discipline on the creative side.

But I'm not sure the pols are going to start flocking to YouTube with anonymous negative ads. And if they do, they aren't going to have much credibility.

That's mostly because there isn't much gatekeeping going on at YouTube. If anybody can post whatever they damn well please without the accountability that comes from putting your name to it, the postings aren't going to have much credibility. At least not among political creative types who know ads are required by law to carry a disclaimer saying the candidate approved this ad.

So, if my hunch is correct, the YouTube hits will have about as much impact as somebody's personal blog with entries about who I had lunch with today and here's a really cute picture of my cat. Great for self-expression, but not so good for reasoned discourse about public policy issues.

Howard Kurtz, media columnist for The Washington Post, this morning had a very brief item ... with one comment only: "How long before [DeVellis] hits the talk shows?" Here's DeVellis' statement, quoted at length with Kurtz' comments interpolated (they're the short grafs outside of quote marks):

"Hi. I'm Phil. I did it. And I'm proud of it.

"I made the 'Vote Different' ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process. There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it -- by people of all political persuasions -- will follow.

"This shows that the future of American politics rests in the hands of ordinary citizens.

"The campaigns had no idea who made it -- not the Obama campaign, not the Clinton campaign, nor any other campaign. I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.

"The specific point of the ad was that Obama represents a new kind of politics, and that Senator Clinton's 'conversation' is disingenuous. And the underlying point was that the old political machine no longer holds all the power.

"Let me be clear: I am a proud Democrat, and I always have been. I support Senator Obama. I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics.) I also believe that Senator Clinton is a great public servant, and if she should win the nomination, I would support her and wish her all the best."

Right. That's why I depicted her as the droning voice of the establishment and had her blown up.

"I've resigned from my employer, Blue State Digital, an internet company that provides technology to several presidential campaigns, including Richardson's, Vilsack's, and -- full disclosure -- Obama's. The company had no idea that I'd created the ad, and neither did any of our clients. But I've decided to resign anyway so as not to harm them, even by implication."

How long before he hits the talk shows?

The jury is still out on the political repercussions of this incident, as far as I can tell, but what it says about the interactivity of the Internet is fascinating.

COM 150: Gatekeepers, Hillary and YouTube

Another class coming in a couple of minutes ... short on time ... so I'll just put up a couple of links ...

There's a "mash-up" -- a video that takes parts of earlier work together into something new -- that's kind of a negative campaign ad comparing Hillary Clinton to "Big Brother" in 1984. It's been on YouTube for a couple of weeks, and it got all over the traditional media this week -- after the Drudge report, kind of an unfiltered (and unprofessional) news blog, gave it a lot of publicity.

Another good story, in the BeyondChron.org website (put up by an alternative paper in San Francisco).

Read these stories, go to the Google news page, read some of the rest of the commentary ... there's a good one (IMHO) on the MTV news website ... and post as a comment to this blog post your answers to these questions:

1. How does gatekeeper theory shed light on this story? Who are the gatekeepers here? Who's doing an end run around them? How? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

2. How important is this? Is it going to change politics forever, as some writers seem to think? Or is anybody going to even remember it two weeks from now?

Bong Hits 4 COMM 317

Read the coverage of the Supreme Court hearing, and answer the questions below. Post them as comments to this blogpost.

1. In addition to freedom of speech, what other issues of fact and law did the lawyers and justices raise? List as many as you can?

2. What do *you* think the controlling (main) issue is?

3. If you were on the Supreme Court, how would you rule on it? How would you decide the case?

4. Why? (Or, to speak like a lawyer, what's your legal rationale?

COMM 150, 209, 317: Free speech, drugs, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus"

Here's an important case that was argued Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court. It involves a high school student in Juneau, Alaska (notice that AP style always spells out the name of this particular state), who unfurled a banner during a school-sanctioned event that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." The school principal said the kid was advocating drug use, while the student said he was testing the limits on his rights of free speech. Mark Sherman of The Associated Press reports:

WASHINGTON -- A high school principal was acting reasonably and in accord with the school’s anti-drug mission when she suspended a student for displaying a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner, her lawyer told the Supreme Court today.

"The message here is, in fact, critical," the lawyer, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, said during a lively argument about whether the principal violated the constitutional rights of the student.

On the other side, attorney Douglas Mertz of Juneau urged the justices to see the case as being about free speech, not drugs.

The dispute between Joseph Frederick, who in 2002 was a high school senior, and principal Deborah Morse has become an important test of the limits on the free speech rights of students.

I'm going to use the AP story to show how lawyers think through a case.

What are the facts? Our system of law, which we inherited from the English, is based on the way courts apply the "black letter law" (i.e. what's written in the law books) to individual cases. And the facts of each case are different. Here's how the AP story sets out the facts in this one:

Frederick was a high school senior in Juneau when he decided to display the banner at a school-sanctioned event to watch the Olympic torch pass through the city on its way to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Morse believed his "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner was a pro-drug message that schools should not tolerate. She suspended Frederick for 10 days. Frederick sued Morse, and that case now is before the court.

See how the facts give rise to the argument over whether the case is about free speech or drug use?

What's the issue? To lawyers, an issue is an undecided question that can be answered one way or the other. The issue in a case is the yes-or-no question that decides the case. In this one, it goes like this: The schools in Juneau try to teach kids not to use drugs, so exercising his free speech about "Bong Hits" brought Frederick into conflict with that school district policy. Or did it?

Here's how Sherman of The AP frames the issue:

Frederick acknowledged he was trying to provoke a reaction from school administrators with whom he had feuded, but he denied that he was speaking out in favor of drugs or anything other than free speech. A bong is a water pipe that is used to smoke marijuana.

"I waited until the perfect moment to unveil it, as the TV cameras (following the torch relay) passed," Frederick said.

Morse and the Juneau school district argue that schools will be powerless to discipline students who promote illegal drugs if the court sides with Frederick. The Bush administration, other school boards and anti-drug school groups are supporting Morse.

Frederick, now 23, counters that students could be silenced if the court reverses the appellate ruling. A wide assortment of conservative and liberal advocacy groups are behind Frederick.

See how it works? If Frederick's sign was nonsense, it didn't violate school policy. But if it was about drugs, it did. So the high court will have to rule on the facts.

What is the law of the case?. The other part of an appellate court case is the law governing the case. Part of it here is the school district policy. If Fredrick had unfurled a banner about sweat socks, puppies or goldfish or anything but drugs, it presumably wouldn't have violated the policy. So that's part of the case. And as so often happens in the Anglo-American system, the law in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case consists largely of earlier court decisions or precedents. Here's how Sherman explains it:

In a Vietnam War era case, the court backed high school student anti-war protesters who wore armbands to class. Since then, though, the court has sanctioned curtailing student speech when it is disruptive to a school’s educational mission, plainly offensive or part of a school-sponsored activity like a student newspaper.

A federal appeals court called Frederick's message "vague and nonsensical" in ruling that his civil rights had been violated. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said Morse would have to compensate Frederick for her actions because she should have known they violated the Constitution.

In other words the 9th Circuit Court, which covers West Coast states including Alaska, agreed with Frederick's argument on the issue by saying his message wasn't about drugs. It is now up to the Supreme Court to uphold the circuit court's decision or to overturn it. A decision is expected in June, at the end of the high court's current term.

From your reading of the case, how do you think the Surpreme Court will rule? How would you rule if you a supreme court justice?

Quiz -- COMM 150 -- 500 extra credit points

Sometimes when attendance lags in my classes, I like to give quizzes in class that are not too intellectually taxing and will essentially reward you for coming to class. Today's quiz is about newspapers.

Answer as comments to this blogpost.

Q. In what large East Coast city is The New York Times located?

A.

1. Petersburg
2. Athens
3. New Berlin
4. Illiopolis
5. New York.

Be sure to tell your classmates who weren't here what you did to earn 500 extra credit points.

COMM 209 -- on the record, off the record

Cute story in media critic Howard Kurtz' column this morning in The Washington Post. It's about Vice President Richard Cheney's difficulty in staying "off the record" with the traveling press during his recent trip to Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

First, a definition. Reporters often take information from their sources off the record, which means they don't attribute it to them by name. A variation on the convention is taking information "on background." It's tricky, and it very swiftly leads to ethical problems because the reporters are keeping a secret (the name) from their readers. But it's done all the time, and we couldn't gather news without it. Here's Kurtz' account of what happened:

The reporters traveling with Vice President Cheney as he flew from Afghanistan to Oman yesterday were granted an interview with someone who would be identified only as a "senior administration official." But the official's identity would not remain a state secret for long.

"Let me just make one editorial comment here," the SAO said about the vice president's talks with Pakistan's leader. "I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business."

The SAO also said that "I was very careful" in choosing words to criticize House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Iraq strategy.

The first-person pronoun gave away the game. But it also raised the question: Why did Cheney feel the need to speak on a not-for-attribution basis, and why did the seven journalists on the trip go along?

So Kurtz did what any reporter would do under the circumstances. He got on the phone to find out why.

Lee Anne McBride, Cheney's press secretary, could not, under the ground rules, confirm the obvious. But, she said, "it was important to provide the press and public with briefings on these meetings, and it was determined that a more comprehensive readout could be provided on a background basis."

Administration officials concluded that, for diplomatic reasons, Cheney could not publicly discuss private conversations with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

That's reasonable. It's how diplomacy works. It's also how journalism works. Some kinds of news just wouldn't ever reach the public if it weren't for "off-the-record" or "background" conventions.

Kurtz also asked the reporters why they went along with it.

Mark Silva, a Chicago Tribune reporter who made the trip, was among those pressing Cheney's staff for an on-the-record briefing, saying the vice president has been elected twice.

"At the start of our meeting with a senior administration official, in which he advised us that he insisted this talk be on background, we asked him, too, to go on the record," Silva said. Cheney agreed to be identified only while discussing the suicide bombing at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that occurred while he was there.

Silva credited the White House with releasing an accurate transcript despite numerous "I" references. "But it's also a measure of how absurd the entire business of speaking as an SAO is."

That about sums it up. At least in this case. I would never, ever tell my opinion of Vice President Cheney. At least not in public. But I can tell you that I know a journalism instructor who thinks Cheney (or whoever the SAO might have been, with a wink and a nod) was abusing the process when he went off on that "editorial comment" of his.