transparency

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 02, 2009

 Monday's press conference announcing the resignation of Bishop Martino was held at an "undisclosed location," with attendance by invitation only. Really. I'm not making this up. 

Look up "press conference" on Wikipedia, and you'll learn:

There are two major reasons for holding a news conference. One is so that a newsmaker who gets many questions from reporters can answer them all at once rather than answering dozens of phone calls. Another is so someone can try to attract news coverage for something that was not of interest to journalists before.

OK, we can scratch those two explanations for the event in Scranton. If you're trying to answer all the questions at once, so that interested reporters don't have to keep calling with more inquiries, you don't restrict attendance. And if you're trying to attract extra news coverage, you want to draw as many reporters as possible, so-- again-- you don't restrict attendance. 

Now what do you do if you don't want to answer all the questions, and you don't want the public to learn what you're doing? One option would be to hold a press conference at an undisclosed location, with attendance by invitation only.