Would it work for you to review in the announcement topic, then split the replies into a new topic prior to publishing? I.e.
- Get to the point where you have a topic you are ready to publish, plus the replies you don’t want to publish
- Click the wrench icon for the topic
- Select Posts…
- Select all
- Deselect the first post
- Move to
- Enter new topic title, category, etc.
- Schedule publishing of announcement topic
This will add a split topic notice to the announcement topic which looks something like this:
I’m not 100% sure whether that notice is visible to users who cannot access the linked topic but the notice can be deleted if needed. The opening post in the split topic will also gain a link to the announcement topic.