SF Chron rebuts Palin, RNC attack

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Sunday, November 2, 2008

Obama sat with The Chronicle editorial board Jan. 17 for the interview, and it has been available in its entirety on the newspaper’s Web site since it took place in San Francisco during the Democratic primary season. In his wide-ranging session with the paper, the Democratic senator from Illinois spoke about his energy plan and an “aggressive” cap-and-trade policy, and spoke about coal technology.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he said. In the same interview, the senator said that “if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.”

Obama’s campaign said today his comments were taken out of context by Palin, and that Obama called the notion of eliminating coal plants entirely “an illusion.”

John Diaz, editor of The Chronicle’s editorial pages, said the paper not only posted the entire audio and video of the Obama interview, but promoted it to readers.

“How can anyone suggest that we hid an interview that we did, immediately put up on the Web – and advertised to our readers?” said Diaz. “We promoted it like hell … and I’m sure the Clinton campaign and the McCain campaign scrubbed it. You can still find the whole 48 minutes and 33 seconds online.”

Online resources

To hear an audio file of Barack Obama’s interview with The Chronicle, go to sfgate.com/ZCGA

To view a videotape of the interview, go to sfgate.com/ZCFF

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.