There are few things less appealing than a bullying, self-righteous newspaper editor, scolding politicians  and the public. Case in point: Phil Bronstein, editor at large at the San Francisco Chronicle, responding to Gov. Sarah Palin and various commentators criticizing the paper for what should have been a big story, Senator Barack Obama’s anti-coal pronouncements.

Bronstein, “My role in the Obama interview cover-up“:

It’s hard to pack in righteous indignation, outrage and a big 15 minutes of fame all at one time.

That’s pretty much where we are here at the Chronicle after Governor Palin’s claims over the weekend that we suppressed comments about the coal industry by Barack Obama at a January ed board meeting right here in SF. If you know our editorial page editor John Diaz, you know that making him say “hell” in a story means he’s pretty livid over the charge.

Me? My feeling is that hinky things happen in a bar at closing time. Let’s always set the record straight whenever possible. But are we really shocked that politicians on all sides twist things a to suit their purposes? You must be as stunned as I am.

The reality is this: the interview wasn’t squirreled down some digital hole, as the Governor claims (”the notion of a “tape” itself is pretty Watergate-era dated). If someone “found it”, digging for anything to help in the coal states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, I guess we didn’t hide it. It was available in audio and video form shortly after it happened and remains on SFGate to this day. Links to both forms of the interview appeared in the print Chronicle on a number of occasions. If the McCain campaign wanted to use this, what took them so long?

Is that really the journalistic standard you want to set, Bronstein? Hey, we posted the recording, YOU look for the news.

Seems antithetical to the idea that journalists have value in exercising news judgment, skills of interpretation, the ability to provide context, and perhaps a small gift of good writing. “Hell, we posted it, our obligation is complete.” Is that it?

As said below, it should come as no surprise that the San Francisco Chronicle’s team of editors and reporters missed the news in their January interview with Senator Barack Obama, that is, his clear, unambiguous support for policies to prevent utilities from building new coal-fired power plants because the costs would “bankrupt” them. In a cocooned newsroom full of the like-minded in the one-party city of San Francisco, statements about bankrupting coal seem like unobjectionable observations of fact. We should bankrupt coal? Absolutely, it’s dirty. And we can replace it with wind and solar energy and conservation and wishes and hopes and dreams of a brighter tomorrow.

Bronstein seems to think his journalistic value was proved when Senator Obama criticized him for being cynical, and he throws in a gratuitous “wink wink” reference to his ex, Sharon Stone. But who cares what a candidate thinks of you (or your ex)? The important thing is the story, and you missed it, as you yourself admit.

Still, I didn’t jump out of my seat when Senator Obama made his comments about the coal industry. It didn’t lead our story and wasn’t in the leadline. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Or maybe, as John Diaz notes, the statements were a little more nuanced than Governor Palin found useful in her rally speech.

Nuanced?

The New York Times publishes the most tedious major editorial page in the country, so predictable that actually reading it is an unnecessary exercise. Making an exception today to review its endorsement of Senator Obama (a shocker, yeah), we see this comment on tax policies:

That means the well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush’s tax cuts will have to pay some more. Working Americans, who have seen their standard of living fall and their children’s options narrow, will benefit.

So, in the Times’ world view we have either well-off Americans or working Americans. Well-off Americans don’t work, and working Americans aren’t well-off.

S&P cut the New York Times’ corporate credit rating to junk bond status this week, but its editorial thinking had reached that point long ago.

In our continuing campaign against the use, and especially the Washington Post’s use, of the inaccurate and inflammatory term “nationalize” to describe the U.S. government’s purchase of $250 billion in preferred bank stock, we report progress! In today’s Post, two legit uses.

Op-ed columnnist David Ignatius refers to global developments as “quasi-nationalization” in  “A Bailout Beijing Would Cheer“:

Free-market partisans in the West were shocked by the Chinese intervention and decried it as a dangerous precedent. But it helped stabilize the Hong Kong market. Now, that earlier bailout seems modest indeed — compared with the quasi-nationalization of the world’s leading banks we’re seeing this week.

Fair enough, and especially in an opinion column. The other mention is in a story about UBS’s difficulties, reporter Howard Schneider writes in “Swiss National Bank Takes $60B in Toxic UBS Assets“:

Swiss authorities moved to stabilize their storied banking system today, agreeing to move $60 billion in troubled assets from the books of financial giant UBS and into a special government-backed fund.

The Swiss government also invested $5 billion of public money into the bank, a reversal for a country that had taken a more hands off approach even as its European neighbors moved to shore up or even nationalize their financial institutions.

Accurate and fair.

Now, it’s possible the news has simply moved on and the bad newswriting featuring the term “nationalization” will return. But it’s also possible the editors and reporters acknowledged that the purchase of up to 3 percent of a bank’s assets does not equal government control and ownership, i.e., nationalization.

Seems like Treasury Secretary Paulson is also making the point, as reported in Bloomberg:

“The steps we’ve taken are absolutely the right steps, they’re bold steps, they’re strong steps to stabilize the financial markets and inject confidence into the banking system as well as capital,” Paulson said in an interview on CNBC television tonight. “I’m very confident that the moves we’ve taken will do just that.”

Paulson defended his proposal as “anything but” a nationalization of the country’s banking industry. He also distanced his effort from a U.K. plan to set aside as much as 50 billion pounds for equity stakes in the banks, provide 250 billion in interbank loan guarantees and 200 billion in a special liquidity program.

“What we’re doing is very different than what the British are doing,” he said.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Larry Kudlow’s CNBC interview with Secretary Paulson is here.

Funny little item from Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online, comparing the coverage of yesterday’s Canadian parliamentary:

NYT: Canada’s Conservatives Miss Goal of a Legislative Majority

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s gamble that forcing the country into its third election in four years would give him firm control over Parliament failed on Tuesday.

 —And here’s how everyone else reported the story:

 Reuters: Canada’s Conservatives win with bolstered minority

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper won reelection with a significantly stronger minority government and called on Wednesday for unity in staring down global financial turbulence.

Etc. To the Times, the class of LaBatt’s is always half empty.

That’s the front page of the Washington Post’s Business Section, updated at noon.

Not to get cranky or anything, but isn’t it really strange that media outfits would misrepresent an admittedly major expansion of government involvement in the U.S. banking system as “nationalization?” This are times in which accuracy and discretion are critical, especially given the public’s shaken confidence. (See earlier post.)

Nationalization evokes all sorts of unnecessary and inflammatory allusions: Bank holidays, expropriation, etc. You could just as well write, “Feds Seize Banks, Bush Says Necessary.”

BTW, we posed a question about terminology to the Washington Post’s business columnist Steven Pearlstein in an online chat today, but did not get a response. (No problem, there were many good questions asked). Pearlstein did answer one semi-related question thusly:

Campbell, Mo.: Is the government rescue plan the beginnings of the dreaded “S” word in American politics, socialism?

Steven Pearlstein: It is a socialistic step. A temporary step, but there’s no getting around it. But let’s be careful not to think of socialism as some sort of dirty word. It is a way of organizing economic activity that has some advantages and, when combined with a basically capitalist economy, has provided a very high standard of living to many European countries. It’s often confused with communism, but it is not that.

Socialize, perhaps, temporarily a step, argued fairly by an opinion columnist, but nationalize? No.

It’s sloppy, misleading, inflammatory, agenda-driven, bad newswriting to use the term “nationalize.”

UPDATE (1:48 p.m.): NPR’s take on the President’s remarks this morning:

Carefully tip-toeing around the word “nationalize,” President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced a plan that will allow the U.S. government to spend about $250 billion of its freshly minted $700 billion bailout program to buy equity stakes in both large and small banks.

Carefully tip-toeing? Get me rewrite! How about the following: “Not using the term ‘nationalize,’ which would, after all, be the wrong term, President Bush…”

UPDATE (2:12 p.m.): From Thomson Financial:

According to the details of the plan, participating financial institutions must sell stock equal to at least 1 percent of their risk-weighted assets, but not more than $25 bln or 3 percent of their assets.

So 3 percent = partly nationalizing. Yup.

Last week we linked to (and rebuked) the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s article claiming to report on the U.S. financial crisis, “The End of Arrogance — America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role.” The tone was what we expect from Der Spiegel, supercilious. Others took offense, as well, so Der Spiegel has printed letters to the editor in response.

Meanwhile, to the conceit of some European elites that their more regulated, refined and sophisticated financial system would remain undamaged, here is today’s news alert:

The German government and financial sector agreed a second rescue package for mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate in Sunday night talks. The government also took the surprise step of guaranteeing private deposits, a move which could up pressure on other European nations.

It was a race against time to avert a financial disaster with unpredictable consequences. Late on Sunday night, top officials from Germany’s Bundesbank central bank, financial watchdog BaFin and executives from the country’s main commercial banks agreed to a new rescue package for troubled Munich-based mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate.

Alarming. Nothing to take perverse pleasure in.

US Industry Today, a magazine that always does a thorough and readable job of covering the U.S. manufacturing economy has a new online look, utilizing the increasingly popular digital magazine layout that closely resembles the hard copy. (In this case, Olive ActiveMagazine.)

The publication’s website is http://www.usitoday.com/ and you can read the digital edition here:

http://am3.olivesoftware.com/Olive/AM3/USIT/

Two-hundred-and-eighty-eight pages! It’s like Vanity Fair for the industrial crowd.  (Which is a good thing.) This issue’s theme is certainly timely — energy. 

New books out from Bob Woodward and Tom Friedman. Anonymous sources battle sweeping generalizations and pronouncements about “what this country needs.” Judging by the news coverage/promotion, the public is supposed to swoon.

How about recoiling instead? From Friedman’s “Meet the Press” interview with Tom Brokaw today:

I wrote a chapter called “China for a day, but not for two.” Really, about what we would do if for one day we could impose, cut through all the lobbyists, all the amendments, all the earmarks, and actually impose the right conditions to get our market to take off.

And cut through that Constitution, too.

Someone send that man a copy of “The Road to Serfdom.”

P.S. Brokaw closes:

MR. BROKAW: That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week, when our guests will include Bob Woodward and his new book “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006 to 2008.” If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS.

Unintentional self-parody from the MSM.

(NAM Executive Vice President Jay Timmons is blogging from the Republican National Convention this week in St. Paul, Minn., following up on his reports from the Democratic Convention last week in Denver.)

OK - I admit this is self-serving, but hey it’s a blog! And, well, who doesn’t like dogs and cats?

Ran into NBC News’ David Gregory walking into the Xcel Center. In addition to being a highly respected and always prepared journalist, David is just an all around nice guy.

I took the opportunity to again thank him for being the special guest at the Washington Humane Society’s annual Bark Ball earlier this year. As the Chair of WHS in my spare time, I promote the rescue, shelter and adoption of companion pets in the nation’s capital with CEO Lisa LaFontaine and her staff and volunteers.

It’s a great non-partisan cause and David Gregory was a fantastic draw.

Environmental groups and supporters of a larger, more intrusive regulatory state have made a vice presidential staffer, Chase Hutto, their bete noire, beating him up for questioning the wisdom and efficiency of expanded government authority over the economy. Hutto is apparently being talked about as an assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the Department of Energy, alarming the usual suspects.

Seen in the abstract, it’s sort of funny that groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists are devoting so much effort to attacking a fellow who would fill a modest agency post in the waning days of a lameduck Administration. The groups went to Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post and managed to elicit a 1,260-word story (that’s really long) on A2 yesterday, “Anti-Regulation Aide to Cheney Is Up for Energy Post.” The attack is spelled out in the lead, Hutto’s appointment being “a promotion that would put one of the administration’s most ardent opponents of environmental regulation in charge of forming department policies on climate change.”

But it’s certainly not to funny to Mr. Hutto to be the target of anonymous attacks because of his political philosophy, and the story represents the kind of clear message sending to those who oppose the extremism of the environmental activists.

Anonymous attacks? Yes, despite the Post’s supposed diligence and ethical standards, its reporters are still allowed to repeat anonymous statements impugning a person’s reputation.

“He’s got an incredible amount of authority and a portfolio seemingly without end,” said a source familiar with policy discussions involving Hutto. “He’s got his fingers in everything.”

Some attribution. Is that an Administration source? Someone from the environmentalist groups who dislikes his policies? “He’s got his fingers in everything.” Why do Washington Post editors allow this kind of anonymous sourcing on what is, after all, a story about policy?

The subjective standard of sourcing appeared in Eilperin’s previous story that mentioned Hutto, the July 11 piece, “EPA Won’t Act on Emissions This Year,” which also included this very informative bit of news that Hutto’s ”grandfather patented at least seven piston inventions for the Ford Motor Company.”

The article ends with the restatement of the implicit thesis from an activist who, we would guess, started this line of criticism.

Francesca Grifo — who directs the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group — said that if Hutto takes the helm of the Energy Department’s climate policy office, the impact could last well beyond Bush’s term in office.

“It’s not surprising that the Bush administration is considering a candidate who has a track record of putting politics ahead of science. Over and over again, appointments like this one have damaged the government’s ability to protect the environment and public health,” Grifo said, adding that in the coming months, Hutto could make policy decisions that the next administration would find difficult to reverse quickly.

Putting politics ahead of science? Cripes, that could be the Union of Concerned Scientists’ motto. But don’t imagine you’ll see a lengthy story in the Post about that group’s modus operandi. They’re too good of a source, someone familiar with their operations told us.