“Public figures and journalists don’t powwow in advance to figure out who’s going to get to pose questions, and what they’re going to concern.”

Oh really. What’s this then?

The White House Correspondents’ Association was born on Feb. 25, 1914, after the White House let it be known that President Woodrow Wilson was interested in having an unprecedented series of regularly scheduled press conferences but was unsure how to pick the reporters to invite to these sessions. To the horror of regular White House reporters, a rumor leaked that the Congressional Standing Committee of Correspondents would be asked to do the picking.

Aghast at this intrusion on their turf, eleven reporters formed the WHCA, decreeing that its “primary object shall be the promotion of the interests of those reporters and correspondents assigned to cover the White House.”

The leak proved unfounded, so the reporters dropped their guard. The WHCA lay dormant until 1920 when the organization held its first dinner. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge became the first of 14 presidents to attend the dinner.

Until World War II, the annual dinner was an entertainment extravaganza, featuring singing between courses, a homemade movie and an hour-long, post-dinner show with big-name performers. During the War years the dinner tradition continued, but the event was more subdued. A 1944 article in the Charlotte Observe reported: “The most complete turnout of the Nation’s war leaders since Pearl Harbor ate unrationed duck and traded off-the-record political wisecracks with the Capital’s press last night at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association. President Roosevelt, attending the only party outside the White House that he allows himself in wartime, sang loud when the entertainers called for audience participation, and laughed louder at some of the fourth term jokes which flew thick all evening.”

No, you’re right, they never powwow. If there’s one thing an establishment journalist will never do, it’s knowingly rub shoulders with the elites or compromise for the sake of access.

Look, I could probably accept a gift from an executive at a company I report on without it skewing my coverage. But I don’t try to predict on a case by case basis what the psychological effect will be; I just observe the rule “journalists don’t take gifts from people they report on.” If the norm collapses to the point where we’re trying to assess how “objectionable” each particular instance is, we’re already screwed.