Treasury going on background is useful

Blogger Felix Salmon of Reuters argues that the Treasury Department briefing held earlier this week with bloggers was helpful to understand their objectives despite the objections of some bloggers that the event was held on background.

Salmon writes, “Of course, you can’t put Sperling et al on the record and then have just Geithner being the only ‘senior administration official’ in the room — that kinda gives the game away. So you see how Treasury ends up where it does — just as you can also see how the likes of Drum end up asking if we’re not all being sucked into the age-old Washington game.

“The fact is that if I thought it would serve any purpose at all to boycott background briefings, I’d be happy to do that. But it wouldn’t. And in many ways these briefings are the closest that people like Geithner ever come to having a friendly drink with the press, not having to worry about how they might get quoted. Most of us would become very quiet very quickly if every word we said was scrutinized in the way that Geithner’s public statements are. Obviously the ground rules serve him more than they serve us. But insofar as we basically just wanted to talk to the guy, I think we came away reasonably happy.

“So while Drum is absolutely right that these meetings ‘allow government officials a chance to peddle their spin in person without really being held accountable for what they say,’ I think that sometimes it’s good to talk to someone without holding them accountable for what they say. I’d say that the walk-forwards-walk-back that we saw on the subject of principal write-downs, for instance, is more revealing than an accountable on-the-record statement would have been. Mixing things up a bit is usually a good idea; I’m generally suspicious of absolutism in these matters. After all, it’s not as though the press corps and Congress never get to ask Geithner lots of questions on the record as well.”

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