Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz weighed in on last week's capitulation by the media, including Post staff writers Peter Baker and Charles Babington, to White House “ground rules” purportedly prohibiting them from contacting Democrats until after midnight for a response to the White House's decision to withhold documents produced while Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. was deputy solicitor general. Said Kurtz, in an online chat on the Post's website: "[T]he press should never have gone along with it."

On July 26, under a purported embargo that the Post said prevented reporters from revealing the administration's decision until midnight -- “too late” to contact Democrats for a response -- Baker and Babington quoted anonymous White House officials spinning the decision regarding the documents. But while other contemporaneous print media reports noted Democrats' previously stated arguments for full disclosure of the documents, the Post omitted them for the second day in a row.

From The Washington Post's August 1 “Media Backtalk: Live Online with Media Critic Howard Kurtz”:

COLUMBIA, MD.: Care to comment on the “Embargo” fiasco? I think you guys have gotten skunked a lot by these guys. Don't you think the administration is making the White House press corps jump through ever increasing hoops to gain or maintain access? Are there any journalistic ethics that would guide this behavior, as the “news” it generated was certainly minor?

KURTZ: I'd never before heard of a midnight embargo -- this was, as the Post acknowledged, a White House demand that a story on the decision to turn over many of John Roberts's government memos be held until that hour, so Democrats and liberals wouldn't have time to react -- and the press should never have gone along with it.