Ban on press at Gore's CTIA keynote lifted

Former Vice President Al Gore will allow the press to attend his CTIA speech after all.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

Former Vice President Al Gore will allow the press to cover his keynote at the CTIA conference in April, after initially banning coverage of his speech.

The CTIA announced Monday that Gore agreed to let the press into his April 3 keynote "due to a high degree of interest." Gore's talk, which is expected to focus on his work as an environmental activist rather than his role overseeing a mobile computing company as a director at Apple, was initially closed to the press but open to regular CTIA attendees.

Gore had a similar policy in place at last year's RSA Security show, but several accounts, including one by CNET's Rob Vamosi, emerged from the show. Given that most of the people attending CTIA will come bearing smartphones that allow them to blog or send Twitter updates to the outside world, a ban on press coverage was not expected to prevent the content of his talks from escaping the room.

CNET News will be in Las Vegas that week to cover CTIA, and will cover Gore's keynote as well.

[RWaldron61]

Why would he want to block the press?? We already know he plays fast and loose with scientific evidence. Since he created the internet, he?s spent his time in science fiction and scientific concurrence, instead of science fact. Why do we care??

[mmntech]

He has top secret information on ManBearPig's whereabouts that he didn't want the papers to find out about.

[kevsmail]

Yeah, the ban makes no sense.

Seems like that would be the only point of him actually giving such a speech - to have it covered by the media. I cannot imagine they look to him as a technology guru, just a cheerleader.

[JoeKoskovics]

Actually, the ban on press coverage was a good thing. They didn't have to waste their time.
Now, they may have to go.

Their assignment editor may want something for the funny pages.