Imagine it’s Friday. If you’re smart, you’ve set up your schedule so you have one or two lectures in the morning to attend before a quick lunch and then the yawning weekend full of possibilities for either realization or roguery; two and a half days of collegiate triumphs and debacles, or both.

In any case, your government is counting on you during the weekend — counting on you to look away while it goes about whatever business wasn’t safe for public scrutiny during the week.

No one claims this is a new trick, although Dana Milbank of the Washington Post (who apparently is forced to hang around on Fridays) observes the Bush administration is nearing expert status at releasing bad or controversial news late Friday afternoon, news that will be played up in ignored Friday evening newscasts or shuffled into Saturday morning editions by night editors who probably would rather be someplace else. Milbank cites 12 examples of perhaps-suspect news announced on Fridays, running the gamut from Dick Cheney’s health problems to last week’s recess appointment of William H. Pryor Jr. to a U.S. Court of Appeals seat.

It’s an effective technique for public relations professionals, particularly in government, to soften any blow.

Not only is this effective — it’s also smart and acceptable. Every presidential administration does it, along with any number of other government bodies.

If the public truly loses out on being informed of important news because of its time release, kudos to Washington’s press secretaries — and shame on the American media.

We’ve been fooled before, been fooled a lot. Journalism has advanced from simply parroting official press views (sometimes outright lies) in the early 20th century to a system in which opposing views argue their cases in stories, ostensibly giving readers and viewers a more accurate glimpse of reality. (Sometimes conflicts can obfuscate the point, but that’s more about intelligence and good writing than it is reporting.)

The press had to change because smart people figured out how to use the media — probably in the same manner that new smart people are fooling us all today, but we digress. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s convenient and suspiciously regular identification of Communists throughout the U.S. government in the 1950s helped spark changes toward more useful reporting, along with Edward R. Murrow’s revelation on CBS of the method of McCarthy’s disgusting publicity grabs.

Media shouldn’t let government take advantage of the news value of “timeliness” — if it’s important, don’t let an intelligent Friday news release deprive the casual (i.e. non-weekend) news consumer from finding out what he or she is entitled to know.