Is the day of a press release an issue of political strategy?

Question

I was watching Al-Jazeera PM news yesterday, and a bulletin about the "US fresh allegations that Assad was using a crematorium to hide evidence of mass killings" came up.

Unfortunately, I cannot find a video of the news (and the one in the linked page is very brief), but at some point the presenter was interviewing an analyst in Washington (cannot remember who). She asked this person, "what can motivate such announcement?", to which the analyst said something like

it is not clear. I mean, it is a Monday, there is no major international meeting going on, ...

This struck me immediately. I went online to find out why the day of the week of a release would matter, but I think I don't have the concepts require to find something like that. "Press release day of week", or other stuff lead me nowhere. And yet, the comment from the analyst made clear that the issue of the day of the week is (to her at least) self-evident, such as to put it in the first point of her list.

Why is the day of a press release a relevant motivation from the political perspective? Is the impact expected to be different?

I can see that a press release on a Friday could perhaps lead to big headlines during the weekend, where perhaps, people pay more attention. But there "has" to be more to it. Is there?

UPDATE

The issue of news in Mondays seems to be more general. For example, today (Monday 6 Nov), The Guardian and other newspapers have released the "Paradise Papers", about tax havens in Bermuda in their printed editions (although the online appeared on Sunday at 18:00). Similarly, The Guardian published the Panama Papers online on a Sunday Evening (18:50 BST, as can be seen here), but in written the Monday after. BBC news has given plenty of coverage to the issue.

Answer 1

All governments try to communicate their policies to the public, and encourage the media to portray them in a positive fashion. Some are more successful than others.

Timing is of course a part of government communication strategy. If you are announcing policies which you expect to be popular, you might spread the announcements out to achieve the greatest possible impact. For unpopular policies like tax rises, the reverse might be true; announce them all at once, perhaps just before a major holiday or sporting event, and people may not pay as much attention.

For example, the UK Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (1997-2010) made particularly strong efforts to control the timing of government announcements:

As in opposition, the high command tried to keep to a grid of media announcements, parcelling out releases to fit the government's narrative. The grid, held at Downing Street, metered out policy, controlling the agenda. Trouble was, as Mr Blair conceded yesterday, as 24/7 news and, later, web news took off, a daily grid became inadequate; news cycles shortened to hours.

But as the quote indicates, this technique is becoming less effective with the rise of the Internet as a news source.

Answer 2

Yes when a press release happens is largely about political strategy. with the 24hr news cycle most stories burn out the same day unless they are really big. Weekends also tend to be dominated by weekly review programs and more people are off enjoying their time off rather than paying constant attention to the news. Monday is often partially a review of anything that happened over the weekend, but a big release will get more coverage than the review parts. this leaves a few basic rules for timing a release.

• Friday is good for unpopular news where minimal exposure is preferred.
• Weekends get less coverage in general, but the rarity of weekend release can make them more notable.
• Monday stories can cover up weekend revelations, or mix in with the noise of the weekend.
• other weekdays a release will get the most coverage.