Media Matters and other liberal pundits have been attacking Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard for allegedly serving as “consultants” for the inaugural address and then praising it on TV without disclosing their role. The claim is based on reports from the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post that were ambiguously worded:

LAT: “As they drafted the speech this month, White House political aide Karl Rove and chief speechwriter Michael Gerson held a two-hour seminar with a panel of foreign policy scholars, including several leading neocons — newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University and Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford’s Hoover Institution — according to a person who was present.”

WP: “One meeting, arranged by Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, included military historian Victor Davis Hanson, columnist Charles Krauthammer and Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis, according to one Republican close to the White House. White House senior adviser Karl Rove attended, according to one source, but mostly listened to what became a lively exchange over U.S. policy and the fight for liberty.”

But it turns out that Kristol and Krauthammer may not have been giving advice on a speech. In the Post, Fred Hiatt seeks to refute the charge:

As to Krauthammer, he has gotten a bum rap. He has been described as “consulting” on Bush’s inaugural address and then praising it. But Krauthammer was invited to the White House with a small group of academics and commentators to discuss Middle East policy; though a speechwriter was present, the inaugural address was not on the agenda and, according to several participants, Krauthammer never discussed it. He wasn’t paid. And when he commented on television (not in his column) on the speech, he was not being entirely complimentary when he called it revolutionary and radical.

And Editor & Publisher’s reporting yielded a similar response. Will Media Matters and the other accusers deal with this evidence, or just ignore it? Maybe the participants in the seminar should have disclosed that they were there, but in terms of journalistic ethics, taking part in an informal policy discussion and consulting in the preparation of a speech are not the same thing.

Update 1/31: Media Matters has posted a new article on Kristol and Krauthammer pointing to contradictions between the defenses posted above and the passage below from a Howard Kurtz story:

KURTZ: Liz Spayd, the paper’s assistant managing editor for national news, said: “We stand by the story we wrote. We have a firsthand source who says it was crystal clear a primary purpose of the meeting was to seek advice on both Bush’s inaugural and State of the Union speeches.”

But ombudsman Michael Getler’s depiction of the writing points back to ambiguity:

GETLER: The meeting was held on Jan. 10 and the White House invitation concerned a discussion of “American foreign policy at it relates to the Middle East.” Among the questions to be discussed were: “What should this Administration do/say more of — and what should it do/say less of? What are the key, achievable goals we should aim for during the next four years?” Presidential speechwriter and policy adviser Michael J. Gerson was in attendance.

I’m inclined to agree with Getler that K&K should have disclosed their attendance at the meeting or, even better, not gone in the first place. But the original Media Matters suggestion that they were “consultants” does not appear to be supported by the evidence.