This passage hurt my brain a little

[retroenzo]

Hmm, according to the transcript, yes, they did. The whole sequence was heavily rewritten from the script draft that's available online. (They even put in a line of Picard saying how distracting it was to have the conversation over the viewscreen, which sounds like the rewriter's commentary on the draft version.) Ironically, I went for the script instead of the transcript because I wanted to see what the set was called (since the scripts always list the sets/locations to be used in the front), and it didn't help in this case because they changed the setting.

Yeah I agree. I think it works better when all in one room as opposed to on the viewscreen but it does feel jarring when Picard offers to beam them on board due to it being "distracting", and yet the very next episode ("Loud as a Whisper") he quite happily talks to both groups of delegates from Solais V in conference mode on the viewscreen with no problem with distractions.