President Again Skips Traditional Year-End News Confab

President Biden came into office promising to restore relations with journalists after his predecessor’s four combative years, but Mr. Biden is again skipping the traditional end-of-year presidential press conference in favor of softball interviews with celebrities.

The Washington Timmes reports the year-end press conference was a staple of past presidents, who viewed it for decades as an opportunity to tout their accomplishments to the American people. Former President Donald Trump was the first to abandon the practice, a snub that Mr. Biden has continued. 

Biden has been less accessible to the press during his three years in office than any other modern president, according to data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

For Biden, a year-end press conference could be an opportunity to reverse his recent rut. He’s underwater in a slew of job approval polls, and other surveys show him trailing potential 2024 challengers — including Mr. Trump, the GOP front-runner — in key swing states.

Questions persist about his age and competence. Even Democrats wonder openly if he should be their candidate in 2024, and House Republicans are looking to impeach him.

“This is a missed opportunity to demonstrate that he’s mentally alert and with it, which I think he is,” said Robert Rowland, who teaches presidential rhetoric at the University of Kansas. “He needs to look for unscripted settings which demonstrate he’s on top of things. It’s a way for him to come across in a way that reassures people.”

But White House officials have said they are trying to keep Mr. Biden from unscripted exchanges that have often resulted in missteps or gaffes requiring cleanups. They say Mr. Biden is trying to go around the traditional news media so his message isn’t filtered by reporters with a political agenda.