Just two weeks after Biden’s inauguration, the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani revealed one such solicitation, which occurred during “an informal White House Correspondents Association Zoom call.” At the time, however, reporters bristled at the request. One unnamed reporter spoke for all those who one of Tani’s sources said were “pissed off” by the implication that media would collude with the White House they were covering: “The press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” the unnamed reporter objected. “That’s not really a free press at all.”

Apparently, the Fourth Estate has managed to overcome the objections to this practice when the lessons learned during the Trump administration were still fresh in its members’ minds. As Tani observed, Trump-era White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders “was known to have asked certain news outlets about their questions in advance” of high-profile pressers — overtures that were summarily rejected. …

How would the Times describe Biden’s successful effort to draft journalists into the effort to dispel voters’ concerns about the doddering president? We can’t say. The paper of record avoided making a note of the White House’s apparent solicitation of reporters’ questions in its Wednesday dispatch from the Rose Garden. Reporter Katie Rogers gave a workmanlike account of the president’s defense of his capabilities, providing context only by citing Trump’s meandering review of Biden’s performance — thereby establishing the contrast Biden himself drew with his predecessor to justify his pursuit of a second term.