Invitations to sip lemonade and soda pop with the world’s most powerful person in the private apartments upstairs at the White House aren’t exactly handed out like presidential Christmas cards. And that’s been particularly true in the time of George W. Bush — especially for members of the news media, whose relationship with the Bush administration could best be described as dysfunctional.

So when a select group of journalists was called over to the White House recently to share some liquid refreshment with the president, most news organizations — among them CNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Washington Times — eagerly embraced the invite. They also acquiesced to Bush’s terms: The sessions were strictly “off the record,” meaning the invited guests could not report in any way on their conversations with him.

Given the recent assault on the use of anonymous sources, the subpoenaing of reporters to try and compel them to reveal sources, the complaints among the Washington press corps about unprecedented secrecy in the Bush administration, and the charges by bloggers that White House reporters have been co-opted by the president, it’s surprising more organizations didn’t decline on principle.

The New York Times and the Knight Ridder newspapers would not attend on the White House terms. “The Times has declined this opportunity after weighing the potential benefits to our readers against the prospect of withholding information from them about the discussion with Mr. Bush,” Philip Taubman, the Washington bureau chief, said in a statement. But a Times story on the decision said the paper had in the past agreed to participate in meetings with similar ground rules.

In times of more cordial relations between the White House and its press corps, such invitations were routine — but they always raised tough questions. Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University who chronicles relations between the president and the press, noted that throughout history reporters have had to make a difficult call in granting off-the-record status to talks with the commander in chief. William Price, a reporter for the Washington Evening Star at the turn of the 20th century, was the first journalist stationed at the White House. He later wrote about his off-the-record dilemma with Theodore Roosevelt. “He said, ‘You couldn’t use anything he gave you. Even if you got the same thing from anyone else, you couldn’t use it because he would be suspicious.’ ’’

Helen Thomas, the veteran White House reporter who worked for UPI for 57 years before moving to Hearst Newspapers, recalls similar invitations. “LBJ pulled this stuff. He would summon us and his beagles and walk around on the South Lawn,” she says. But Thomas says reporters granted Johnson that privilege because it was during the time when he was agonizing over what to do about the Vietnam War. “We got a real sense of what was going through his mind.”

In calls to other veteran correspondents, it was hard to find anyone who would say no. “I remember many years ago, The Washington Post would not attend background briefings at the State Department,” recalls Marvin Kalb, who spent 30 years at CBS and NBC. “I was then a CBS correspondent and I went. I went because I felt that I was learning. I felt that was my responsibility.” And what of the White House invitations? “I would go,” he adds.

“We would, of course, love many more on-the-record sessions with the president,” says David Bohrman, a CNN vice president and its Washington bureau chief. “There aren’t a lot of press conferences. But we don’t see these as mutually exclusive. There were gains for both sides to sit down and have a conversation. There’s some insight we get into him and clearly there is some insight he gets into us.”

Such sessions aren’t the only off-the-record opportunities with the president. Many Washington journalists attend White House Christmas parties, where they have a few minutes to chat with the president and get a picture snapped with him. And, in two weeks, winners of the White House Correspondents Association’s annual journalism awards will attend a small reception with the president before the association’s annual dinner.

But the recent sessions appear to have been much more substantive. News executives say they stake out a position on accepting off-the-record or background briefings based on a variety of factors. During the last presidential campaign, the Associated Press and other media outlets balked at off-the-record meetings with the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, because they felt that they had little on-the-record access to the candidate. “He wanted to do off-the-record sessions,” recalls Sandy Johnson, AP’s Washington bureau chief. “It was not OK with us. We had no access to John Kerry.” The wire’s refusal worked: Mike McCurry, who by then had joined Kerry's campaign, encouraged Kerry to provide the press with more on-the-record access.

Relations between Bush and the media remain tense, and with his sinking approval ratings, it’s no surprise he’s trying to improve that up close and personal. The question remains for reporters: Is it too close for comfort?

Contributing editor Elizabeth Wasserman is a Washington freelance writer. She can be reached at ewasserman@cq.com.