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.

A good friend, Scott Hennen, launches his new radio station today from Fargo, North Dakota: “AM 1100, The Flag,” WZFG-AM 1100, broadcasting at 50,000 daytime watts, which goes a long way in the Upper Midwest, Bismarck to St. Cloud and beyond. Programming is conservative talk, with Rush, Hannity, and Mark Levin. (Scott has substituted on Hannity’s national program.)

Scott opens his own, new program this morning with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. On the list of topics: Energy.

Good luck, Scott!

Sen. Reid filed cloture yesterday on S. 2035, the Free Flow of Information Act, i.e., the federal media shield legislation that would insulate reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources in federal legal proceedings. Give the various maneuverings on energy legislation, omnibuses and get-out-of-Washington-for-August urges, it’s not quite clear what’s going to happen with the bill. Certainly the media have been lobbying for the legislation and action on the bill would gain positive reviews at a time when coverage of Congress is critical.

As we’ve commented before, a badly written media shield bill could leave trade secrets, personnel records and other confidential business information wide open for publication, even if the information was acquired illegally and there was no public benefit to its disclosure.

Senators and staffs of both parties have been looking at this legislation with a serious attitude. Let’s hope that seriousness stays in force, even with the urge to escape town.

Having studied up a little about the Marcellus Shale, hydraulic fracturing and natural gas regulation, we went back and read the original story in the Albany Times Union, page one, banner headline, written by Abrahm Lustgarten of the ProPublica non-profit, public interest, journalism venture: “Upstate New York’s looming natural gas nightmare.”

A couple of things jumped out.

First — Number of energy executives cited in the story: 0

No apparent effort at a balancing point of view, assurances or even platitudes from an industry that’s being condemned for threatening a “natural gas nightmare.”

Second — Clear identification of the critics: Not good.

In 2004 Theo Colborn, a scientist who specializes in the health effects of low-dose chemical exposure, began to investigate drilling fluids. She was spurred by the story of a Colorado resident who suspected her cancer was tied to water contamination from a nearby gas well.

Colborn collected shipping manifests that trucks must carry when they haul hazardous materials for oil and gas servicing companies. When an accident occurred, she took water and soil samples and tested them for contaminants.

But who is she?  The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University describes her:

Theo Colburn is senior scientist and director of the Wildlife and Contaminants project at the World Wildlife Fund. She started her career as a zoologist late in life, after she and her husband retired from a successful pharmacy business to raise sheep. She became alarmed by pollution in the Gunnison River near their ranch in Colorado. Her involvement in Western water issues led her to seek a master’s degree in ecology and a Ph.D. in zoology. Her pioneering work on the effects of synthetic chemicals on the endocrine system has led some to compare her to Rachel Carson, who warned the world about the dangers of DDT.

And, the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award! But the ProPublica story in the Times Union identifies this activist and prominent member of a major, international environmentalist group only as a scientist who specializes in the health effects of low-dose chemical exposure. The impression that’s left is of a disinterested scientist, not an anti-industry activist.

Third, adherance to basic journalistic accuracy and practices: Bad.  We offer this sample from a longer version of the ProPublica story – originally posted on the paper’s website but now only at ProPublica:

Hart, the Pennsylvania treatment plant executive, said the last time he talked with a DEC representative, the caller, whose name he couldn’t remember, displayed a general lack of understanding of water issues and didn’t have a clear grasp of waste water disposal alternatives.

“The caller, whose name he couldn’t remember.” As far as credible sourcing goes, that’s not. It’s laughable.

Here’s ProPublica’s credo: “ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’ We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”

The “moral force” of any story is undermined by lousy, one-sided journalism.

Ack. The New York Times single-copy price jumps to $1.50, after the Wall Street Journal announces a coming $2 newstand price. AP reports: “Newspaper publishers are battling sharp rises in newsprint costs and deep declines in advertising revenue.”

Don’t forget energy costs …. It takes a lot of fuel to distribute big, heavy, stacks of newspapers over vast distances. And, as another AP account suggests, newspaper advertising is a trimmable cost for companies when energy costs are rising.

A new manufacturing-oriented publication is now out, and it is a very nice, high-quality addition to the genre of regional business magazine and online site. Manufacturing Success, Upper Midwest starts with a descriptive name; it’s published in Minnesota.

As the publisher, Charles Arnold, notes in his welcoming message, the publication is “an industry collaborative communication resource for manufacturing.”  Hence the publication features materials coming from manufacturers and associations, including articles and news releases, like a digest.

Two goals are primary, Arnold writes: to support the growth and professionalism of leading manufacturing trade organizations, and to build a reservoir of knowledge that manufacturing companies can access easily.

Lots of good, informative things in the magazine index:

• Some Thoughts
  Manufacturing Success Upper Midwest is the realization of a dream
• Dedication to Technology
  Concept Machine Tool places important on new technology
• Moving Forward
  Manufacturing Software Gives Chappell Central the Tools Needed to Measure, Maintain and Expand
• Time Tested
  Machine tool distributor provides a strategic approach to Brenk Brothers’ growth
• Norm Coleman interview with Fred Zimmerman
  Fred Zimmerman interviews Norm Coleman on issues facing manufacturing

And online…

• STEPS camp in full swing at St. Thomas
• Minnesota DEED Opens Office of Science and Technology
• Scholarships for Machining Technology Provided by Haas
• Nick Schweim joins the Merger and Acquisition team at Quazar Capital Corporation
• Cirrus’ Jet takes off

 So congrats and good luck and keep spreading the word.

Reading through the alumni bulletin the other day, we spotted an item about Columbia J-School grads going to work for ProPublica:

ProPublica, a nonprofit public interest journalism newsroom, continues to build its staff of investigative reporters. After receiving hundreds of applications, five new staffers were hired…

Right, ProPublica.  Another “public interest” journalism project, well-funded by foundations, not accountable to the marketplace. Supplying investigative projects to media outlets. Wonder which way its coverage will lean.

Today, we can see what kind of stories the project produces.

WNYC has learned in a joint investigation with ProPublica – a non-profit investigative news organization – that New York state regulators have been actively promoting the safety of a practice that has caused environmental damage elsewhere. And they may not be ready to handle the regulatory complexities. WNYC’s Ilya Marritz has the story.

REPORTER: For over a decade, gas companies have been intensively tapping unconventional plays in western states like Colorado. Drill rigs have brought a lot of wealth, but at the same time they’ve dredged up a host of environmental problems – contaminating water supplies and drying up aquifers.

The culprit is a practice called hydraulic fracturing. It’s never been done much in New York. But it’s the only way to get gas out of the Marcellus. Basically the driller blasts the bottom of the well shaft with water, sand, and chemicals, under very high pressure in order to free up the gas. Hydrofracking demands a huge amount of water of water – up to six million gallons per well.

And here’s how the Albany Times-Union plays the 2,700-word story:

And from the website:

Upstate New York’s looming natural gas nightmare
Regulators asleep as lawmmakers attempt to declare vast acreage open to the energy industry’s iffy underground fracturing technique

They’re aghast at hydraulic fracturing? Calling it toxic? Criminy.

If you can manage to demonize one of the basic processes now used widely in oil and natural gas production in the United States, well, turn out the lights, bundle up and put the car up on blocks.

This report is evidence of a journalistic trend that should profoundly trouble free-market and business advocates. With newspapers cutting staff, more and more editors will be looking for ways to fill the paper. So now you have “independent” groups doing journalism, offering their reports in the “public interest.”

This manifestation, at least, is clearly political, anti-business. From ProPublica: “Lead funding for this effort is being provided by the Sandler Foundation, with Herbert Sandler serving as Chairman of ProPublica; other leading philanthropies also providing important support. A Board of Directors and a Journalism Advisory Board have also been formed.”

Herb and Marion Sandler are prominent California bankers (now retired) and major contributors to liberal causes and candidates. From a New York Times Sunday Magazine profile:

Since the late 1980s, the Sandlers used their wealth to finance a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union and Acorn, the grass-roots organizers. They helped found the Center for Responsible Lending, where they are among the largest benefactors. They are also among the very few philanthropists in the country who finance basic scientific research, at the University of California at San Francisco. And they have set up nonprofits to conduct research into parasitic diseases and asthma. In 2003, they started the Center for American Progress, which is intended to be a liberal counterweight to the heavyweight policy centers of the right, like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. So far, the Sandlers have given around $20 million to the center.

Acorn? So now the man who funded the notoriously secretive, corrupt and hard-left activist group, Acorn, is able to pay his way onto the front page of newspapers like the Albany Times-Union. 

It’s as if George Soros had a free wire service, operating under the guise of “public interest.”

NPR’s “Morning Edition” has this week been marking the 100th anniversary of the Model T Ford, an entertaining enough series of stories about how the mass-produced vehicle changed America. The reporting has the expected rueful tone now and then, the regrets for modernity, and, “Now India wants affordable cars, too?”

“It was a wonderful invention, the Model T and the mass-mobility automobile,” says Dan Neil, the automotive critic for the Los Angeles Times. “But now, we’re starting to see that there were consequences.”

He says the debate over global warming, and dependence on oil-rich nations, all come back to the Model T’s internal combustion engine, powered by gasoline. And over time, these engines have only gotten bigger and thirstier.

All things considered, we prefer to celebrate freedom and prosperity and mobility than to regret the admitted consequences. In 1900, nearly half of all Americans lived on the farm, and it was a hard and spartan and constrained and oft-short life. Life’s better now.

So above you’ll find “The American Road,”* a Ford-sponsored documentary that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Model T.  Narrated by Raymond Massey, the 43-minute film notes the freedom and broadened experiences brought by the affordable car, not to mention the industrial revolution it launched:

Everywhere you looked you saw the Model T. It became part of the American scene. It took the housewife to market. It brought the doctor to his patients in time to save their lives. It saved time and speeded up business. Filling stations sprang up by the thousands and a whole new industry in gas and oil was created.

Not only did it save time, it gave the average citizen a wonderful new way to spend the time he saved. Now, for the first time, Americans were able to travel inexpensively across their own country in their own cars and see the grandeur of their own inheritance. They could visit the great national parks, which had been created for the people, which so few people had ever had the opportunity to see. Now the whole family could get away from the noise and the heat of the city.

Freedom, prosperity, comfort, experience. What’s to rue?

* The video is available at the Prelinger Archives, here. The embedded Google version includes updated shots from the ’70s.

Mark Grannis is the attorney for Steven Hatfill, the scientist whose reputation was attacked by anonymous leaks during the anthrax investigation. Grannis spotted our commentary yesterday about the proposed federal media shield legislation and sends along a link to the statement that came from Hatfill’s camp after the Justice Department agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle his lawsuit against the government. The Justice Department denies any guilt, however. (AP story.)

Anyway, from Hatfill’s attorneys, the statement. It’s pretty fierce, but then, Hatfill was wronged and spent seven years trying to restore his reputation. Excerpt:

To be clear, this was not a case in which a courageous whistleblower called government malfeasance to the public’s attention. It was instead a case in which the government used the press, violating federal privacy laws in the process. Almost no one in the press recognized this at the time, and an alarming number of journalists refuse to admit it even today. Journalists who genuinely aspire to serve a “watchdog” function by alerting the public to abuses of government power must understand that if they pass this kind of information along, they are allowing themselves to become tools of oppression. The collusive relationship between unethical officials and uncritical reporters, which caused such great damage to Dr. Hatfill’s personal life and professional reputation, must not be treated by journalists as if it were a respectable method of newsgathering.

We can only hope that the individuals and institutions involved are sufficiently chastened by this episode to deter similar destruction of private citizens in the future – and that we will all read anonymously sourced news reports with a great deal more skepticism in the future.

At the Reasonable Minds forum, Grannis adds a comment: “In response to one question I received by e-mail: Yes, this does end the litigation against the government. No, it does not alter my opinion that the reporter’s shield legislation currently being considered by Congress is an outrage. We need to do much, much more to protect privacy and reputation in this country, and whatever laws we pass for those purposes become totally unenforceable if reporters get a license to obstruct justice.”

The Washington Times provides a pro-and-con matching of columns about the federal media shield legislation, i.e., a proposed law that would let journalists refuse to disclose their sources in legal proceedings. The Free Flow of Information Act is sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who writes, “A legislative shield for the press?”

The con comes from Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who challenges the pressing need for a federal law. In “A shield for the press?” Mukasey focuses on national security and intelligence issues, but makes broader points worth noting:

The Department of Justice is committed to protecting a free and robust media, but creating a statutory privilege for journalists is no small matter. A legal privilege can bar access to information otherwise relevant to national security, criminal and civil investigations and proceedings. Technological advances constantly expand the population involved in what could be considered “journalism,” and the range of information potentially subject to a journalist’s privilege is virtually limitless.

Which suggests the private sector’s problems with the legislation, that is, creating an ill-defined class of citizens (journalists, bloggers, trial-lawyer fronts) with special, “extra” First Amendment rights to acquire and publish confidential business and personal records.  Your correspondent’s recent column in Forbes addresses some of those issues.

Mukasey also notes…

One might assume that a fundamental change of this kind would be considered only in response to a dramatic spike in the number of subpoenas to the press. In fact, the opposite is true. Since 1991, the Department has approved subpoenas to reporters seeking confidential source information in fewer than two dozen matters. This record provides no justification for a new statutory privilege.

That’s right. The push for a federal law came largely as a response to the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to reveal her sources in the Valerie Plame name leaking (it was Richard Armitage), and then the contempt charges levied against Toni Locy, a USA Today reporter who covered the rumor-plagued investigation of James Hatfill’s non-involvement in the anthrax case. The Justice Department last week settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, while Locy’s legal circumtances remain cloudy. We draw from the comments from Hatfill’s attorneys that a federal media shield would have just shielded the attacks on Hatfill’s reputation.

Hatfill’s attorneys blasted the news media, making no distinctions in quality of coverage. “This was not a case in which a courageous whistle-blower called government malfeasance to the public’s attention,” they said in a statement. “It was instead a case in which the government used the press, violating federal privacy laws in the process.”

Does that kind of slander deserve protection?

For more from Hatfill’s perspective, see this WSJ op-ed by his attorney, Mark A. Grannis, “Justice and the Press.”