On Monday the State Department announced a "whole-of-government" campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court — the tribunal in The Hague that tries war crimes when nobody else will. That's the news. The interesting part is where the news was allowed to happen. * Not at a podium. Not in a press room with reporters and their annoying hands in the air. Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched the campaign with a produced video and an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, promising America will dismantle the ICC "brick by brick, if necessary." * Think about what each format comes with. A press conference comes with follow-ups: Which allies have signed on? What happens to countries that stay in the court? Who investigates war crimes once it's rubble? An op-ed page comes with a byline photo and total, blessed silence. * The video, meanwhile, says the ICC and its friends are "waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law." You can write "so-called international law" in an op-ed. At a podium, someone gets to ask which part, exactly, is so-called. * The rest of the press then covered the op-ed as the event. CNN: "Rubio vows to 'dismantle' International Criminal Court." Al Jazeera: "Trump administration vows to 'disable' International Criminal Court." Scare quotes working double shifts, because the only source text available was the government's own prose. * Euronews at least got the story to day two: "EU says threats against ICC 'unacceptable' as US launches campaign to 'dismantle' court" — quoting the EU spokesperson that attacks or threats against the court's officials "are simply not acceptable." That's what coverage is supposed to do: find someone who gets to answer back. * An op-ed is opinion, by definition, and opinion pages publish powerful people every day. But when the author is the Secretary of State and the content is a live policy campaign against a court, the Journal's opinion page isn't hosting a viewpoint. It's distributing a press release with nicer typography — and the one thing a press release never has to survive is a question.