Offering to cover someone's travel expenses is different than offering to pay someone to attend the speech. For anyone who has contracted before, that's an explicit difference that is usually discussed and agreed upon before the contract is signed by both parties.

If a contracting client offered to pay for your room and board and travel expenses, but not for your time in the office to work on the project, it's a bad deal. Or they could pay for your time in the office but not travel expenses. Or they can pay for everything. Those are three separate situations. By not clarifying which one it is, it's misleading. So if the client said we'll pay you to come work on this project and you'd have to travel to it, then you get there and they only pay for room and board, you'd be pretty pissed.

The lack of specificity is the same thing happening here in the reporting. Therefore it's misleading.